On the highway north of Ipoh we stopped for fuel and the strangest thing happened. The service station did not want to sell us fuel. Apparently there is a law in Malaysia that service stations can only sell RON95 fuel to Malaysian citizens or Malaysian registered vehicles. Research later on the Internet confirmed that this restriction is actually law and has to do with the government subsidizing fuel prices and not wanting Thailand and Singapore “border jumpers” getting the subsidy. As the service station only sold RON95, we left empty handed and proceeded to the next station which presumably chooses to ignore this law and provided us with RON95 fuel. Technically we are permitted under law to purchase RON97 fuel, but Sterlin prefers RON95.Till then we’d had no trouble getting RON95, hence our surprise when this happened. We’d been mostly avoiding highways and always filled up at petrol stations on secondary roads. So we’re specualting that they either chose to ignore the rule, or weren’t aware of it, or, didn’t enforce it because our car is neither from Thailand, nor Singapore.
Malaysia: Fuel.
