Paranakan Museum

Today, we paid a visit to Paranakan Museum

The Paranakan museum looks small from the outside of the building.   In reality, it is not small.   There are 10 galleries, 10 levels in the museum.  There are exhibits of Paranakan jewellery, costumes, furniture, beadwork, porcelain and journey through 12-day of traditional Paranakan wedding    I found them interesting as I learned about Paranakan culture from here but my boys were not interested and kept pulling me away.

During ancient times,foreign merchants from distant lands like China and India came to Southeast Asia for lucrative trades in fine products like textiles, spices.   Some of the traders put down roots and married the local women.   The descendants of these intermarriages are Paranakans.   Peranakans means "locally born" in Malay

Beautiful chandelier and the traditional costume

Household furnitures

Beaded shoes

Wedding and the items used in wedding
This looks eerie though

The items to be sent to the bride's family

The wedding gift box on the left and pagoda trays on the right.   They were used to bear wedding gifts in wedding procession where gifts were exchanged between families of the bride and the groom

The wedding basin

Gold accessories for the bride

Wedding chamber

All Png Png interested in were the two olden days telephones

There are stamp in various stations in the different galleries for visitors to stamp on a "Family treasures" wheel.   

This activity attracted both my boys especially Chen Chen. He went round eagerly looking for the stamps instead of the exhibits.    We stamped all the stamps on the wheel

The reward for collecting all the stamps - beautiful postcards