Earlier this week we met the tourist-friendly Malaysian city of Malacca where, to our delight, tourists ride about in three-wheeled, flower-adorned pedicabs (rickshaws). In class we pretend to be hard working rickshaw drivers as we sing “My Rickshaw,” pedaling from sunrise to sundown: “Abang beca, abang beca di tengah jalan, I drive my rickshaw in the town, Abang beca, abang beca di tengah jalan, I pedal hard to keep those wheels going ’round . . . .” In this video I’m sitting on a chair to teach the song, but the real fun takes place in the classroom. There we get down on the ground and pedal pedal pedal, climbing all the way up an imaginary hill — which, even in our imagination, is hard work! — then letting gravity grab us as we race toward town.
Tag Archives | Malacca
Riding a Rickshaw in Malacca — Three is the Magic Number
One of our favorite songs of this season is, “My Rickshaw” (“Abang Beca”) a traditional song about the rickshaw drivers in the tourist-friendly parts of Melacca, a port city on the southwestern coast of the Malay Peninsula.
Founded as a port town in the early 1400’s, Melacca had became a strategic pan-Asian trading hub long before the Portuguese conquered it in 1511. The Dutch ruled from 1641 to 1798, then the British until World War II, then the Japanese during the War…eventually Melacca became part of independent Malaya. Today it is a tourist-friendly part of Malaysia — a Portuguese-oriented port town, and a UNESCO-registered World Heritage site. We sing in class about the town’s uniquely colorful, musical three-wheeled pedicabs, like the ones we see in this video.
