Wedding snaps

We started the day with a walk up to St Paul’s church which is on the top of the only hill in Melaka. It was built by the Portuguese in 1521 and then used by the Dutch, but is a ruin now. This couple arrived for a photo shoot. We thought that posing between two large tombstones for your wedding photos was a little strange! The church was empty except for the tombstones; the windows and roof long gone. There were small notices with translations of the text on a few of the stones. Most of them were Dutch and most were of men with the text describing their rank or job. However, the one that stood out for me was of a woman where the description was “chaste, pious beloved wife”. Quite a contrast to the “Captain and free Merchant” that described one man.


Later in the day we went to a Chinese temple and the Naval museum which is in a replica of a huge Portuguese ship which was used in the battle to take Melaka from the Sultan and then sank on it’s way back to Portugal loaded with bounty taken from the defeated Sultanate. And there was a lot of sitting in cafes with cold drinks and eating good food.