The Ugly Truth: Traveling Food

For the past 5 years of traveling I've seen drastic price changes to the food at rest stops along the trans-Borneo road. These stops, be it small shack kopitiam style or medium scale concrete restaurant that dots every 1 hour of travel distance, offer a variety of exotic food you can find anywhere else in any township you live in. And what makes them unique is the price the owners set for each of those food.

If Labuan have duty free thingy, the shops here in Sarawak have travel tax, foreigner-who-dunno-actual-price tax and you're-hungry-so-have-to-buy tax charged on all goods and services. Well, the toilet is free anyways. If you want running tap water to clean your hands afterward it will be 20 cents. Tissue RM1.

Back to the food, several big rest stops do not put price tags on their goods. Most of them are grab, say and pay. You GRAB a sweet & sour Mr. Potato, the lady behind the counter will SAY it is RM5.00, and then you PAY RM5.00. Then you savor the expensive 20-25 potato chips while arguing in your head "WHY THE HELL LA I BUY THIS THING?"... Well anyways that's the lumrah of a traveler. Below are the list of prices you can expect to see as of 2009:

Drinks: The same as any coffee shops, canned drinks may cost up to RM2.00
Keropok (don't care what): RM3.50 - RM5.00 (normal price RM1.20 - RM3.50)
Maggi Mee Cup: RM3.50 (increased by RM1.00 within the past 6 months)
Meal (nasi campur etc): RM5++ (depending on mood somehow)

So be careful out there and prepare a wad of cash if you are planning to make a lot of stops during your travel. No point arguing with the owner as the next available food might be 200KM away. Travel safe, ciaoz...