The very very first experience: almost got ripped off.

When I arrived at the airport, I knew that my friend Stacey was waiting outside so right after going through immigration inspection and collecting my bags, I walked as fast as possible to the exit 8. My flight was delayed for half an hour and it took nearly one more hour for immigration inspection as it was Sunday, a lot of people were traveling. So we couldn’t meet as expected. I didn’t see her, I couldn’t call her (actually I already registered roaming service but somehow my mind was so dumb to realize that I can just call her from my phone), I wanted to get a local SIM card. I ran into two security guys standing near the exit 8 and asked for a place that I can buy SIM card. One guy was like this: SIM card huh? and then he looked around suspiciously and started to talk to the other guy in Malay that I could not understand a word. Then they asked me to follow them. Instead of showing me the telco store, they lead me to a corner, one guy turned his back to me and tried to pull something out of his wallet which I was not sure if it’s a SIM card, while the other guy asked me to pay RM200 ($50 or so). I wasn’t so familiar with RM, I did have a couple thousand of RM in my wallet that I can pay but after doing a quick math, I smelled something wrong. There couldn’t be that expensive. One more thing was that they were so suspicious. My instinct told me to run, and I told them softly:

“Hmm, you know what, I didn’t expect it to cost that much of money then I don’t have enough cash here. Maybe I should go meet my friend first and she will help me withdraw cash from my card then I will go back to you for that SIM card later”

I didn’t wait for them to answer, I walked away as fast as possible towards a group of local drivers there, to make sure that those two guys do not follow me.

A few munites later, Stacey picked me up and I found out that I can buy a SIM card with one-tenth of that price. I knew it.