Good Friday

And what a good Friday. It's Friday, I can't believe its almost over! This trip has been such a blast and jammed packed, but absolutely amazing along the way.

Our first activity of the day was doing a short city tour. As per Ruth's recommendation, we made sure to stop at all the highlighted landmarks of the city.

A mosque

A water clock

St. Mary's church

Have another flower

...Our next site, a sister in frame, out of focus

The map keepers. I excel in navigation

A clock tower

We found a textile museum that had all kinds of information and displays for different ways of making batik (hand painted/stamped fabric) shoes, tapestry, metal weaving and more. It was interesting, but Amanda and Dad appreciated the museum much more than I think I, or mom, did.

So Mom, Nicole and I hung out at a cute cafe in the museum and ordered a charcoal banana brownie (not the greatest) and some lemonade, which gave mom a little shock.

I feel like Mia (my roommate, would've appreciated the aesthetic of this cafe, it was very Mia-esque)


Becca, this is for you

Wow, this is so original.

We continued through the town and found little odds and ends to explore.

A peace wall?

And a street market!

We decided to take a snack break at the street market. We bought some mini rice donuts:

And we got more skewers, since the last ones were such a hit. I liked the chicken ones best. But by far the best thing at the market were these cold drink mixes. They were quite lemonade, not quite juice, but something in between, but they came in longan, lemon-mint, watermelon, and coconut flavor and I think we tried them all, and I even got a second lemon-mint one, because it was THAT good. Like I mentioned before, the Malay drink game is strong.

Lemon-mint

Watermelon

Longan

And then we arrived to our main attraction of the day: Central Market! It was an indoor collection of stalls to browse and shop around and we all found some great stuff. The market is known for its batik fabric, which is precisely what made Amanda so excited to be there, so we made sure we didn't leave until she had found some batik fabric to her liking.

And we even did our own batik! I think that was the most fun. A boutique right outside the central market sold batik "paintings" and you could pay a few dollars to do your own. So Amanda, Nicole and I did! It was nice to paint and it made for a cool souvenir to take home, cause we made it ourselves!

This was so fun!

This is what I painted.

For a second snack, we stopped at a shaved ice-cream stall in the food court and bought peach and strawberry flavors and man were those delicious.

Wow, we're so excited for this

I'm such a broken record, but almost everything we ate in Malaysia was excellent and this was no exception. Since the ice cream was frozen and then shaved, it gave it this wonderful fluffy texture that made it melt in your mouth!

We took the train a few times

Dad does not fit on the train

On our way back to the hotel, we made a quick stop in the mall. A few days before I found this korean home goods store called Domesky and it had the squishiest softest neck pillows, ever. So I got one on the way back from the train station. I couldn't resist. They also had an adorable squishy duck, but Amanda promised we would come back tomorrow for it. We were in a little bit of a time crunch to get back for dinner.

For dinner we had Indian cuisine served on banana leaves with rice, naan, curry and chicken. It was the messiest meal, but very tasty. 

For a post-dinner snack and a truly Malaysian experience, Tony and Jenny treated us all to...wait for it...durian! Yes, we finally had the opportunity to try fresh durian. And I let the photos explain the rest.

Here we go

"Ugh, I regret everything"

"And it's slimy too"

"But it ends nice"

Nicole's a boss, nothing phases her

Garlic snot slime, is how I would describe that. yuck.

Nope.

Nope!

Nope! Abort! Abort!

So that' to say that none of us will be ordering that in the near future.

And then with Vune and Tang and Tony and Jenny, we attended a Good Friday service at their church. This was by far my favorite part of the trip. I love going to church in a different country and seeing how other believers worship God and love one another. I think its amazing that we all can live thousands of miles apart and never speak to each other, and yet as believers we all share this one faith that connects us and brings us together and it doesn't matter if you're in Malaysia, or Hungary or the USA, God is present everywhere.

Only one more day. Some of these photos were taken by my family and some by me. I need to up my camera game, cause in comparison, my photo quality leaves something to be desired...Until next time!

-Natalie