Malacca Tour and Cocktail Party

Today we started fairly early on our daytrip to Malacca on the coast. It is a very old town and the settlers first came there when they arrived in Malaysia. It was about 2 1/2 hrs by bus from Kuala Lumpur. The town has a lot of history and has a mixture of all the countries that have once occupied Malaysia - Portugal, Holland, England and Japan. Malaysia got it independence 1957. On the way we stopped at a Portuguese settlement and also at a rest stop with interesting fruits.

The Chinese also have a big influence here and all religions are practised in harmony. You can even find a chinese temple with Buddhism, Taoism and Confusionism in the same "compund" right next to a mosque and then a hindu temple - all on the same street. It was a very hot day and we did quite a lot of walking. We climbed a big hill where there was a church ruin on top. During this walk we came across he python snakes where I got acquainted with an albino python (see the picture!). I was the only one who dared and I had to pay 10MYR (about $3) for the pleasure! We had lunch at a large chinese restaurant and the food was soso.

We did not return to the hotel until 6.45pm and that just gave us 45 minutes to shower and change since 7.30 was the start of the Cocktail Party at the poolside at JW Marriott. The Swedish ambassador and his wife were both present and talked to us. The food was great and the volume of 200 Swedish women is deafening! 

Tomorrow we are having lectures in the morning. Mostly about Swedish involvment in South East Asia.