Of Durians and Fishes

A friend made the very astute observation of how places in Melaka are often named after natural elements, and he even named a few examples, just to show how observant he was - Ayer Keroh, Durian Tunggal and Alor Gajah (more like Alur Gajah, am I right?)

Needless to say, I was very impressed. 

However, I would have been more impressed had he observed the law while sitting behind the wheel as we were on our way to Melaka a couple of days back. Feeling awfully bored by spending the weekend in Tampin doing nothing but think of ways how to cut names off of the list of diabetic patients we were supposed to interview for our study, my trusty brothers in arm - God bless the fools - decided to visit the historical town and end the day by having dinner at that oh-so-fishy open air eatery, Umbai.

Now, like all things that yield best results when done spontaneously e.g. the decision to profess one's love for a member of the opposite gender, the trip was possible only because we did not ponder too long on whether we needed to bring clothes for the night, or whether some of us would get travel sickness or even whether A' Famosa would still be standing when we got there. Alas, like all things that yield best results when done spontaneously, something is bound to go wrong somewhere along the way e.g. the person you just confessed your love to turns out to be a blood relative. In our case, that 'something' was the dinner in Umbai.

So here's a Top Gear© Top Tip: if you're planning to chow down on grilled fish in Umbai, make sure you get there early. Not when people are already heartily enjoying theirs, leaving you only the choice of species of fish which I have never heard of before and squid. Either you arrive early, or you bring your own fish for them to cook. No, I'm not kidding you on this one.

Enough talk. More pictures. Do they not speak a thousand words?