How to phone back home?

Ben van Wijnen

This question is often heard by me: "Can I use my mobile phone to call back home, when I'm in Malaysia?" 
I answer always: "Of course, but you better don't do that. It's very expensive. So...don't do this".
Also expensive is using the telephone in your hotel room. 

This is how it looks when you have bought the card.

How to phone back home?
For example: 
You are in Malaysia. You're having a wonderful vacation and you want to let the people back home know, that you're doing all right. You want to phone them. How do you do that? 

Well, that's not so difficult. There are several prepaid card company's. You can buy them everywhere: in the supermarket, in the souvenir shop, at the newspaper stall. Sometimes the shops have stickers on their window to let you know, that they are selling prepaid cards.
There are cards in different price rages: RM20,- RM30,-, RM50,- and RM100,-
For RM50,- ( Euro 12,50) I could talk over an hour to my home country (Holland).

In the shop you ask for a prepaid Calling Card for the telephone. I buy always the card from TIMEKontact, because of the good experience we've had using this card. TIMEKontact is a prepaid calling card for discounted rates to anywhere in the world. Calls can also be made from either mobile phones or fixed line phones.

When you have bought  your calling card, you have to scratch two numbers. One is you Card Number and the other is your Pin Number (look at the photo below). You have to choose a toll free number, where they speak English. On this card  in this example it is: 1 800 182 661. When you call in your hotel room, you have to pay the local cost, so go outside! The local costs are different in every hotel , but the price should be around 30 sen.

This card is scratched. you can see the card number and the pin number.

After dialing the toll free number a computer voice will ask you for your Card Number and Pincode. Each followed by a hash (#). 
In this example it's like this: 5059594033 # and the pincode  8723 #. 
A voice will tell you now, how much money there is on your card.

Now you dial your country code. The country code for Australia  0061 and for the USA  001, followed by the area  code and then the telephone number (at the end an hash #). . 
Example:
5059594033# 8723# 006129999999#   
Now you hear how many minutes you can phone to Australia or USA and you can talk to your family.
When there are 5 minutes left, the computer voice will tell you: "You have 5 minutes left".

Remember that calls can also be made from either mobile phones or fixed line phones.