KL – City of people trying to rip you off

Tourist seems to equate to cash machine to the locals. we seem to be attempted to be ripped off at every turn. First is the man at the bus depot who when i asked for a city map produced a standard small folded paper map and asked for RM15 = approx $6.50, these are usually free, obviously he didnt get any money and i didn’t get the map, we picked up a similar one fore free from a hotel lobby and a more extensive one for RM10.60. 

Tandas

Then there’s the tandas (toilet) there is usually a helpful fellow with a mop and his hand out, he mops around the bowl or squatty and sometimes gives you a paper towel or toilet paper .

Lunch

Then there’s the place we went for lunch. i was asking the price of the food. they told me some prices reluctantly, then i spotted what i thought was a large prawn, no one could give me a price only some vagueness that it depended on the size of the animal. i stupidly thought “its a prawn how expensive can one be”, so i got some briyani (flavoured rice dish) and lamb curry, octopus curry and a prawn then i went to pay, no sir please sit and eat. pay after. ok, well the food was good, and when i started eating a man with a large smile and a pad came to inspect what i had. after finishing the man with the large smile returned. finished some scribbling and handed me a bill. RM26, i nearly had a heart attack, one item was RM13, the next was RM9 and the last was the 2 drinks for RM4. you could tell by the look on his face he knew he had me and there was nothing i could do. i asked for a explanation of the bill. The RM9 is for the briyani and lamb curry, the RM13 is for the lobster. It suddenly became crystal clear why no one wanted to tell me the price of the thing. after some annoyed discussion from me and some pointing to the the sign written in Bahasa Malaysia from him i paid and we left. Luckily the food was good but the annoyance stayed for a while. then i realised he didn’t charge me for the octopus curry, HA Karma baby.

Sim cards

Next we went looking around and found a mobile phone repair / sim card + topup place in a market building. cool we need sim cards, the transaction went something like this,
RM8.8o is that the nett price?
yes sir.
does it have any credit on it already
yes RM4
ok good, can we have 2 please.
yes do you have your passport so i can register them for you.
-hand over passport
-takes some details and registers the sim
can we please have RM10 topup as well
yes it is RM10.50 for RM10
ok
-all done and toped up
that will be RM51 please
-- WTF i think that maths doesn’t add up to me.
how do you get that price?
RM15 for each sim + RM10.50 each topup
NO NO NO NO you didnt tell us it will be RM15
the extra is for registering the sim for you
i could have done it myself
-- some heavy discussion goes on and he decides we aren’t so stupid. i tell him we will only pay RM10 for each sim he agrees.

The moral of the story = make sure of the full price before agreeing buy anything.