Malaysia

Patronas Towers

KL Tower

St. Paul's Church from 1500's, Melaka Malaysia

Overlooking Melaka

Our Quarters at Pondok Lodge

We went to Malaysia from June 23 to June 26. It was quite the adventure. Our guest house (Pondok Lodge) was over a bar - which we didn't realize until night time and they really liked to watch the World Cup until 4 in the morning. We "slept" at the airport Friday night because we had an early flight back and that was really rough. We also learned the public transportation system fairly quickly in Kuala Lumpur. It felt like we were back in the states in NYC or something. Malaysia is primarily a Muslim country, so that was my first encounter with women fully covered to their eyes and with headdresses on, other than in a Mosque. We took a day trip on Thursday to Melaka which was a good pace for us; it was very colonial and on the coast. I felt like I was in South Carolina or Florida or something which made me miss home a lot. We went back to KL and backpacked downtown with all our stuff the entire day because we were going directly to the airport that night and that wore us out real quick. We sat in line for 1.5 hours Friday morning to get a pass to the bridge of the Patronas Towers at 630pm (I think I saw them on Amazing Race). This short and event-filled vacation was good for our team, maybe not relaxing, but good. And, it was great practice for the Amazing Race!!! We went to the movie theater - which was a highlight because there are definitely no theaters here in Cambodia. We saw Karate Kid and Toy Story 3 for like $3 each and they were both great movies! On our way out of KL our last night we saw a robbery first-hand by two guys that rode their moto right next to us...

God's protection was truly over us this trip and we are so grateful to have some free time as a team. We have been doing ministry prep and ministry together since October. I had to talk with 12 men for about 20 min in order to get our Visas renewed when we returned to Cambodia. They were not going to let us renew them until July 5 and I was not going to leave the airport until we all had renewed Visas in our hands. Everything worked out and we got to see a completely different and new culture from what we've been used to these last 2 months.