If Southeast Asian history, colour and antique shopping are your bag, and you find yourself in the vicinity of Kuala Lumpur, you're in luck. Melaka, a 90-minute drive south and once a bewitching jewel that entranced the seafaring European nations, is today a showcase of Malay, Portuguese, Dutch, British and Chinese architecture and culture.
In the 1400s, Chinese princess Hang Li Po was sent to the Sultan of Melaka as a gift from the Emperor of China. Her large entourage formed the beginnings of a Chinese community, and Bukit China is now the largest Chinese graveyard outside the mainland (with 12,000 graves dating more than 500 years from the Ming Dynasty).
In later years, many Chinese traders married native non-Muslim women to form a distinct cultural group - a fusion of Chinese traditions and Malay customs - known as the Straits Chinese, the Peranakan, or the Babas and Nyonyas. In Melaka there are distinct styles of architecture, language (Malay mixed with Chinese phrases), furniture, clothing and cuisine.
The essence of the Peranakan way of life is preserved in the Baba and Nyonya Museum, a restored Chinese baroque mansion with neo-classical European architecture. Inside there are beautifully preserved items of Chinese, Victorian and Dutch furniture. In the days of Dutch supremacy, Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock was known as Millionaires' Row and was where the Dutch colonial masters built their mansions.
All that remains of A Formosa, the fort that protected Melaka's Portuguese chiefs for 130 years, is a weathered, crumbling gate (below). Visitors swarm through it to pose next to the fort's cannons. Tourists haggle with local artists over rice-paper watercolours of the river and town. Behind the gate, 140 steps lead up to the ruins of the Church of St Paul, built in 1521 by a grateful Portuguese captain after escaping Chinese attackers at sea. The Dutch converted it to a Protestant church, and British colonists used it as a gunpowder store.
In the middle of town, at Dutch Square, rows of trishaws (below) line the shaded pavement and trishaw riders rest with their feet on the handlebars. Dutch Square boasts a collection of rust-red buildings and swarms with tour buses and sightseers taking photographs at the Clock Tower. Stadhuys, a distinctive Dutch colonial gem with solid doors, louvre windows and bricks imported from Holland, is the town hall that was the Dutch seat of power in the mid-17th century and is now home to the History and Ethnography Museum.