Tuna
Monday 13 May 2024
We headed to Melaka today, which is only 220km north and on the coast. However first we needed to top up the Touch n Go card for the toll roads the car man gave us and you can do this at any petrol station. Tick, done. Next stop was to buy a local sim card, particularly for the data. So far, all our accommodation places are contacting us through WhatsApp and often during the day when we might be between accommodation places. I found a shop that should sell them along our way out of town. However, the girl in the shop didn’t want to engage, wasn’t helpful and told us she couldn’t sell us a prepaid sim card. Despite there being a wall full of them. She said we should buy one from a 7-Eleven. Luckily for us there was one about 50m down the road where a nice lady sold us one and a RM25 per month plan. Awesome, we could sort it out tonight. Tick, done.
Time to head out of town and go north. My turn to drive mighty Produa Bezza, which is a gorgeous bright electric blue. The huge 1.3 litre engine really got into its stride as it hurled us forth along the freeway. It does a lightning quick 0 – 100km/hr in about 60secs and then cruises quite comfortably. The air conditioning works brilliantly, it goes from Off to AC, there is no heating. However, having the air conditioning on does affect the power and pick up speed of the car. Although it isn’t that comfortable to sit in as our shoulders nearly touch and The Albatross’ knees rest against the dash (both driving and as passenger). The drive was quite pretty as it is palm tree plantations all the way and we got to see some of the hills in the distance.
We stopped for a quick lunch at one of the road side stops. They are either petrol stations with a parking and food area, or just a parking and food area. A hot bowl of soupy noodles and then we were on our way.
Our accommodation for the next few nights is an apartment in one of the high-rise buildings. It is just back from the ocean and we have good views of the posh private estate of houses and the big ships anchors just offshore.
In unpacking, I realised that I’d left our wall adaptor (that we purchased a couple of days ago at Changi Airport) at our last accommodation. Bugger! So, a quick search and we found a nice big shopping mall that had a few electrical shops that would hopefully stock an adaptor and there was also a Digi shop (sim card provider). This was useful as we thought they could help us with inserting the sim and getting everything going. Big tick to the electrical shop, we now have another adaptor. Also, big tick to the Digi shop, they inserted our sim and the lovely lady was going to set everything up and register our number for us. However, as we are foreigners, we needed our passports to complete the setup, but they were in the apartment, so would have to do that ourselves later.
Last stop in the shopping mall was the supermarket to pick up some laundry detergent, a few groceries and some wine. Final stop was to the restaurants to get some take away for dinner tonight. Tick, done.
Time for a glass of wine, whilst I sort out registering the new sim card. It all should be quite straight forward, scan the QR code and follow the instructions. All good until we have to take screen shot of the passport. It just didn’t want to recognise the passport, coming up with an error each time, so we just had to leave it. We will go back to the Digi shop tomorrow and get them to help.
