This is the Place

This is where I spent 12 years of my childhood: in a sleepy old historical town. It didn’t look very different when I was a kid and still doesn’t. There are more cars now and the buildings are taller, but the historical spirit remains and so do the lampposts. This is also where I found bliss.


Once the capital of a mighty empire, this riverine trading port founded centuries ago by a Sumatran prince has absorbed the incursions of Portuguese, Dutch and British invaders and nurtured such distinctive cultural blends as the Straits Chinese Babas and Nyonyas.

I remember riding through town in a trishaw with my mom. Those days, the trishaw was a common mode of transportation. Today, it is an overly decorated vehicle with blasting techno music to lure tourists. There was the ice cream seller who sells his everfamous ice cream sandwich - two ice cream scoops sandwiched between two pieces of white bread, the "kacang puteh" man (peanut seller) who sells assorted peanuts in a papercone, the breadman who comes by our house every evening at 3pm on his motorcycle with buns and bread, candies and snacks, hanging off the sides of his bike and I will buy a mini candy floss(cotton candy) on an ice cream cone for only 10 cents.
My friends in the neighborhood would go cycling together every evening without a care in the world. We played hopscotch and a skipping rope made out of rubberbands in the middle of our street without having to worry about getting rolled over by cars. We got chased by stray dogs and yet it was fun. We plucked mangoes and played "masak-masak".

This is the place. This was bliss!