Quite a collection of museums under one roof

The second afternoon, Jenika, Sahana, and I ventured to the oddest collection of museums I have ever seen under one roof.

There was the International Kite Museum, with poorly kept versions of kites from around the world. It was interesting to see how kiting has sprung up in many cultures (and, apparently, not always by direct transmission from another culture). There were also a couple of neat anthropomorphic kites.

One floor up was the Museum of Enduring Beauty. This was a bit of a shocker, as it turned out to be a museum exploring the different ways different cultures physically alter the body in pursuit of beauty. There was, for example, a section on lip ornaments with examples from tribes across Africa.

There was also a section dedicated to the corset and to waist thinning, including the amazing story of an Englishwoman who got down to a 13 inch waist (no, that's not a typo). Aside from the discomfort, she apparently had no ill health effects and died of natural causes in her 70s.

Other sections included neck lengthening, tattooing, scarification, and dental modification. Whoa. The air-con was also busted and so the environment was a musty 95 degrees and humid, lending a bit of surrealism to the whole affair.

The third museum was the Museum of Tops, dedicated to the lattu, or spinning top. This game is played by children all over Asia, including by my brother-in-law Anshul in India. Sahana is a lucky recipient of a new lattu and should be learning the game shortly. The game also has a competitive version that is much like marbles, including a circle on the ground, but is played with tops that are spinning the whole time.

A fourth museum presented the history of Melaka in quasi-3D. There were monitors with 3D projections of reenactments of various parts of history. There were paintings that had been rendered in 3D to change as you move past them. And there was a 360 degree movie theatre, sadly out of commission on the day of my visit.

The fifth and final museum was the People's Museum, about the culture of Melakans. I didn't get the chance to spend much time here, but it looked relatively thorough.

So: kites, beauty, tops, 3D, and people. Has anyone ever come across a more eclectic set of museums anywhere?