United Kingdom, with plans to also expand into Brunei and the Philippines. In March 1999 the company opened its first outlet in Bangkok, Thailand. The company aimed to open 100 stores in the country by the end of the year 2000, and 150 in Malaysia by 2003. The first Indonesian Video Ezy outlet opened in March 2001. That same year the first Video Ezy outlet opened in Singapore within the Jelita Shopping Centre at Bukit Timah. The Singapore network consisted of a mixture of corporate-owned and franchised stores located in either outdoor shopping strips like Holland Village, residential towers such as International Plaza, or large shopping centres such as VivoCity. Unlike Australia, Video Ezy Singapore could operate in most shopping centres due to 7-day-week late night shopping hours and its population less reliant on private automobiles needing to park outside stores. In June 2005, Video Ezy opened its first outlet in the United Arab Emirates at the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai. The company planned to open 17 more stores throughout Dubai in the following 10 years. By August 2005, Video Ezy had 156 stores in New Zealand, 128 in Thailand, 135 in Indonesia, 19 in Singapore, nine in Malaysia, one in the United Arab Emirates and one in Fiji. In its Asian franchises, Video Ezy also offered Video CD and LaserDisc movie rentals to its customers due to the increased popularity of the formats there. However one of Video Ezy's biggest challenges in doing business in Asia was the rampant video piracy in the region. This had particularly affected Video Ezy's plans for expansion in Malaysia. In Indonesia, where consumers could buy pirated movies on Video CD for as low as USD50¢, Video Ezy tried to mitigate this by lowering their rental prices to match, with some success. Video piracy also negatively effected the business in Fiji, forcing the owner of the Fijian Video Ezy franchise to close his five remaining stores in 2012 after incurring losses of USD$170,000. In the four years to 2011, Video Ezy Indonesia closed 51 of their stores, blaming the closures on the continuing wide availability of pirated movies on DVD and Video CD as well as the rise in popularity of Pay TV channels and internet downloads, leaving 105 outlets left in the country. In the two years to January 2013, the Indonesian franchise had shut down a further 60 of their outlets.