Saturday 3/19/11 Kuala Lumpur

Today we first WALKED to China Town and were guided along the way. Saw some areas of the city that we hadn’t seen earlier. We passed by a very large mosque and stopped at a Chinese temple. We did a little more shopping (!) on the busy streets of China Town. At lunchtime we took a taxi back to the hotel.

At 2.30 we boarded a bus for High Tea at Caracosa, which used to be the British Governor’s residence while Britain for 90 years ruled over Malaysia. When Malaysia gained their independence in 1957 they let the British keep Caracosa with lots of land and when the Queen of England visited Malaysia for the Commonwealth meeting in 1987 she stayed there. However, some time in the 90’s some Malaysian people made a big stink about the British owning such a large piece of real estate in Kuala Lumpur and demanded it back. The Brits gave in and gave them back Caracosa and it is now a hotel with only 8 rooms. We occupied the whole dining room for our tea party. It was a proper English High Tea with sandwiches, scones and sweets. After tea the bus brought us back to the hotel so that we could pack and also get ready for the “Gala Dinner” tonight.

The evening started with drinks in the foyer at 7:30. By 8:30 we entered the dining room which was set with round tables for eight. For starters we got salmon carpaccio over greens and very nice bread rolls. We had a master (or mistress?) of ceremony and first we were treated to traditional Malay (Borneo) dances by a dance troupe. There were thanks yous and speeches and gift giving and then we got the main dish which was chicken with some risotto and veggies. After we had almost finished eating we were treated to a fashion show by a very famous (in south East Asia) batik designer and the dresses, someone said, cost around 8000RM (more than 2500 US$!!!) Some were looking at the creations which were for sale, but I don’t know if anyone bought anything!

After the fashion show there were more thank yous and the SWEA women here in Kuala Lumpur had done an outstanding job arranging everything for us. The evening ended with a raffle drawing. I did not win anything. Around 11:45 we returned to our room to finish packing and to check out from the hotel. The bus for the airport left at 6:20am and we didn’t get back to our room again until about 1 am. So it was a very short night.