A Chinese traveler, Wang Dayuan, visited the island around 1:30 p.m. and described the places he saw. “Here lived and roamed the famous “Tan-ma-hsi (Temasek) barbarians”, the Orang Laut of the region. The most striking element of this description is the statement that "natives and Chinese live side by side", which appears to be the first mention of a Chinese community in Malaysia. (Colless, 2) This shows that Singapore's multiculturalism dates back to when the region was just being discovered. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the Malay Archipelago, made up of Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Singapore, was gradually taken over by the European colonial powers, with the arrival of the Portuguese. Later, in the 17th century, the Dutch managed to control most of the ports in the region and established a monopoly on trade within Malaysia..