So much ridikulusness: Malaysia edition - Explore Archived World Race Alumni Blogs

Travel days sometimes look like Omoa, Honduras –> Tegucigalpa, Honduras –> Atlanta, Georgia –> NYC, NY –> Dubai –> Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia –> Kuala Lipis, Malaysia all in only 4 days and 80+ hours with no horizontal place to actually sleep. Do I remember any of those days? No, I was basically unconscious from being so exhausted. #worldraceprobs
While you’re exploring Times Square with a few squad mates you decide you want to go into Forever 21. As you enter you stand right in front of the escalator trying to decide where in the store you want to go first. Immediately an employee comes over and says “hey I’m sorry, but you guys are blocking the main pathway. I’m going to need you guys to move.” Yes, that was her subtle way of saying, “y’all look ridiculous like you’re poor homeless girls, and I need you to get out of the way so people don’t see you” haha! I just can’t believe she would judge the awesome World Race ware we were repin. You mean colorful rain coats, tights with wool socks and tennis shoes, and a funky scarf with a not matching hat isn’t NYC stylish? Rude.
After 4 days of straight traveling and not once having a horizontal comfortable spot to actually sleep in you can assume we were exhausted. We’re on the home stretch with one last 3 hour bus ride to take us from Kuala Lumpur to Kuala Lipis before we’re finally at our ministry site. As soon as we get in our seats and eat our first semi-sketch Asian lunch we pass out. I mean you could’ve done anything to us and we wouldn’t have had the slightest idea. I’m just gonna go with God had a little protective bubble around is that day because someone coulda walked off with all our stuff or done anything and we wouldn’t have ever known.
When your teammate, Kaitlin, is on crutches and you’ve searched high and low for a wheelchair or walking boot, and in order to get anywhere in town you have to walk, and you’re trying to get to dinner… your best alternative is obviously the rolling office chair behind the desk. Besides the wheels exploding into pieces after going over a speed bump and a major mishap on rough terrain, it was a genius idea that was nothing less than… A major fail. Sorry to disappoint. You’ve gotta admit though… it was a genius idea right?
We also snagged a shopping cart from the local grocery store to hall her around in. Sadly, we decided to return it before our second genius idea could be put into play.
Nightly squatty potty poop conversations are a regular occurrence. Eh what the heck… Let’s be real, they’re a morning time topic, a lunch and dinner time topic, a walk to the grocery store time topic, a team time topic, and a just to pass the time by kinda topic. Truly an all purpose, go-to kinda conversation.
Our regular squatty potty convos were taken to an entirely new level when one night during team time Sydney feedbacks the entire team on their squatty potty use. And then the feedback session rapidly escalates when everyone begins sharing their squatty potty “squat” methods. But wait… Of course Tyler and Tommy decide it’s a great idea to not just talk about it, but also demonstrate their squat methods. So here’s my serious question to you… For squatty potty squat methods, have you adopted the basketball defender stance or the baseball catcher stance?
When your daily routine at the gym is pleasantly interrupted by the cool Hercules/Hulk-like Mr. Taurik who doesn’t allow you to just do your own thing, but quickly becomes your own personal Asian trainer. Talk about a good day.
It gets pretty hot at the gym. I mean it’s more like a gym and a sauna combined in one. Within 5 minutes of working out us white peeps are swimming in our own sweat. Well, apparently that sweat also looks very similar to oil because a few sweet little Asian women who didn’t have a drop of sweat on them, looked at me and frankly asked me if I had coated my body in oil before coming to the gym? Haha no, I did not oil up before going to the gym. And yes, sweating that much is a thing.
The World Race sometimes brings incredible spontaneity out of people. Sometimes it’s in the form of Jacob, with his thick afro and overgrown beard, deciding to straight razor his head one fine evening. So that’s what he does of course.
So there was this lovely World Race journal in the house we were staying in that holds all sorts of fun things previous World Race teams have suggested. Each team begins it with something like… “Stop what you’re doing and call Ijah!” or another team wrote something like “Have you called Ijah yet?” Besides being told in the notebook about 7492072752 times to call this woman named Ijah, we also saw her phone number posted in multiple places in the house. So guess what we did? We called Ijah and asked her to go to dinner with us. She doesn’t show up to dinner, but while we’re all sitting in the living room listening to Brad’s testimony that night, we faintly hear this “Hello,” “Hello?,” “Hello!” outside our gate… And to our surprise it’s little 23 year old Ijah spontaneously stopping by to meet us. And basically every night since then we hung out into the wee hours of the night and became best of friends!
After introducing ourselves to Ijah for the first time we proceed to go around the circle and tell her our ages. It’s Jacob’s turn and he simply says “27.” Ijah takes a double wide eyed look of surprise and exclaims “When I first saw you, I thought you were Arab!!!” Hahaha new monthly high goes to Ijah and Jacob’s initial interaction.
That awkward moment when Brad walks into a Chinese temple and asks for a menu because he thought it was a restaurant… Oops.
World Race days where you get invited to an Indian families home for a ritualistic Hindu festival and lunch. With adorable Indian children running around, the smell of fresh burning incense in the atmosphere, and delicious homemade Indian food, this afternoon quickly became a highlight. And to top it off… We ended our day with dinner at the Curry House and wild Karaoke with our new friends Ijah and Dikyaa.
Staying hydrated is important but boundaries are necessary. You have until 4pm each day to drink your daily designated intake of water. Anything after 4pm means you will be waking up in the wee hours of the night, hurdling team members in a tiny cramped room, struggling to find shoes, blinding yourself by the light, and exerting an outrageous amount of effort squatting on the squatty potty… thus making yourself stay awake for at least another hour because your body is no longer in sleep mode from the exerted energy it took to simply relieve your bladder of the amount of pee it was holding which was probably not really that much to begin with. Repeat this two or three times throughout the night and you’re about ready to take that little water bottle you were sipping on in the evening and karate chop it in half and toss the pieces out the window. Trust me… Stick to the 4pm boundary. Or just sleep on the couch… It’s closer to the bathroom.
Those incredible moments where the teenage boy who signed up for English classes spontaneously states he wants to go to heaven right before the class ends the first night. When he comes back the next evening Brad asks him more about that statement and why he said it. By the end of class the next day, the Chinese teenager accepted Jesus into his heart, and we had the opportunity to pray over him. That was the first conversion our ministry hosts have had in the 3 years since they’ve been in Kuala Lipis.
In Malaysia we have to be careful about what we say in public. Religion is a touchy subject so we’re not aloud to openly share Jesus unless someone asks. While sitting in a restaurant, sometimes you forget this, and in the excitement of the moment Ronny shouts “Praise Jesus!!” …Oops! On that note… We decided it was probably best to leave the restaurant.
When you’re crossing the roundabout on your way to dinner, and you notice this guy on his motorcycle flying around the curve going way to fast and leaning way to far, and you think to yourself “this guy is gonna fall.” Literally a split second later his bike is skidding across the asphalt with his body skidding right behind it. Your entire team sprints over to see if he’s ok, and before you can get there he bounces up, grabs his bike, puts his helmet back ON HIS LAP (where it was before he fell off) and continues to speed off. I think his pride was hurt more than he was, but come on… At least put the helmet on, dude!
Squatty potty. Aka #legday all day errryyyydayyyy!
I wish I could count how many times I’ve caught people taking sneak photos of me or asking my team to be in pictures for advertising purposes. People think they’re so sneaky, but it’s so obvious when you point a DSLR distinctly in our direction. It happens at the train station, restaurants, cafés, malls, walking down the road, riding the bus, sitting in hostels… Everywhere! Haha Who woulda guessed we’d become celebs this year.
When you go over to your Malaysian friend Ijah’s house for a homemade dinner it sometimes turns into one of the best days on the race. Holding and feeding a baby monkey, eating delicious Malaysian food while sitting Indian style on the floor, and ending with ridiculous games that are hysterically comical are just a few of the memorable highlights from the night.
As we’re walking to the bus station at 5:45am to catch our bus to Kuala Lumpur Sydney states, ”I remember when I was in college I moved a lot and it always took my moms car, my dads car, my dads trailer, myself, my family, and a lot of friends to move everything. And now when I move… it takes… Me. And walking.” What a sad reality.
I love those adventurous days on the race where you rent bikes with your teammates and explore the island you’re on. During your exploration you find yourself almost being hit by 4 buses, playing human frogger with every road you cross (trust me, you need to try it… especially in another country where they drive on the wrong side of the road. The level of difficulty is greater) or sometimes, in order to cross the road, you decide carrying your bike up the stairs and across the walking bridge and back down the stairs is better than playing live human frogger (lame, and not suggested). Sometimes you lock your bikes up in the Burger King drive thru, sneak into a private shopping center, and buy coffee/a weird red bean smoothie while also looking like street bums compared to everyone else in the fancy coffee shop. And other times, you think you’re close to your hostel, but really you’re almost half away around the entire island…and this is no small island we’re talking about. Let’s just put it this way… Penang Island is not bike friendly, and I’m glad we survived to tell about it.
Sometimes your team decides to take a bus to the nearest beach, rent jet skis, go parasailing, get fish pedicures, search for street food, get fried to a crisp, and any other crazy shenanigans we could get ourselves into. Talk about one of the greatest days of the race. Maybe my favorite part of it was when Kaitlin and I, when told our time was up for jet skiing, gunned it in the opposite direction for a good 5 minutes 😉 haha. We brought them back eventually.

Gosh, I know this month’s was super long. Sad part is? There’s so many I probably didn’t put in here. I felt like this month was full of endless laughter, and eventful adventures. Definitely one of my favorite months of my race so far. Enjoy my month 5 highlight video 🙂