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Telegram is a messenger where I post short travel notes. This page is a self-hosted backup of that channel.

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As a bonus, here's about buying a local SIM card.

You can't buy an e-SIM online, only at the office. Same with a regular SIM. Convenient, right? So I went to the most official Touch store in Beirut to get a regular SIM card. They gave me a ticket saying there were 32 people ahead of me. Just out of curiosity, I decided to watch how the queue was moving. Turns out it went pretty fast. They got to me in about 20 minutes!

The queue system is set up in an amusing way: there's a display showing the customer number and the window number. But here's the catch: the number only appears after the customer sits down at the window. Next to the screen sits a guy who shouts out the next number. In Arabic. If nobody responds, he just keeps calling. Lucky for me, I knew how my number sounded in Arabic, otherwise I would've left empty-handed. They charged me $18 for 10GB a month.

Later I found out that smaller shops don't have these queues, but they might charge you more for the same plans.