Brunei - Bandar Seri Begawan

Beautiful Mosque - coated in 21ct gold

This morning I caught a taxi to Brunei! I think that's wildly cool, I've never caught a taxi to another country before. The border procedures took a fair while to go through but I had help from an Australian lady who moved to Perth from Kuching 22 years ago. It hadn't occurred to me that I would need to pay for my visa on entry so she came to the rescue again with the requisite $20 BND (about $15 AUD) and I paid her back in Ringgit. Armed with a shiny new full page stamp in my passport, I got back into the huge, leather-finished, air-conditioned taxi for the rest of the trip. It took 3 hours in total and wasn't that exciting, except for the roadside ditches that looked like lily ponds for the first half hour of Brunei. We arrived at Bandar Seri Begawan (the capital city) and I was dropped off at a shopping mall as requested by the tour company. I called Rudy and read my book for a while until he picked me up, getting a few strange looks from the girls on their lunch breaks (me and my bags...) Once he arrived he asked if it was ok if I went to the rainforest tomorrow instead (I'd already said I was flexible since my flight out is on Wednesday) so we had to find me a hotel for the night. I chose the Terrace which is fairly dated but clean, with good service, and a swimming pool for when I return from the jungle! Accommodation is far, far more expensive here than Malaysia, but still cheap by Australian standards.

High Tea

Rudy was fantastic. He checked me in and waited while I dumped my bags, then took me out for lunch at a local chicken rice restaurant, the oldest one in Brunei actually. It's such a simple dish but delicious, and it's funny, here the chicken breast meat is considered undesirable, unlike Australia. After lunch he dropped me at the Royal Regalia building, having booked me a boat driver for a mangroves trip at 4pm. The Royal Regalia is quite amazing, you have to take your shoes off outside and I can say it's the first time I've ever walked around a museum barefoot. It felt a little strange, given the utter opulence of the place. One exhibit of the coronation room even had two security guards watching over all the gold, and here's me running around like a monkey. Still, so was everybody else. You couldn't even take a bag or camera inside so they had lockers at the front for everything.

Kampong Ayer

I walked down the street, making one shop proprietor's day when I stopped for a drink, and ruining it by paying with a $100 bill. I went down to the waterfront and waited for Ali, my boat driver. Rudy had already warned me to ignore the other boat drivers, some of whom were extremely persistent, but eventually one man came over to me and we established that the boat he was on was my driver, and he was running a tour with two Kiwis, a mother and daughter. Basically I got to do their tour as well as my own, which was great since they were visiting the Kampong Ayer (water village) which I had forgotten about. It's a massive water village with almost 40,000 residents, and has been in existence for over 1300 years. It has its own schools, mosques, hospital, police and fire station. Wikipedia actually explains it quite well. Anyone can build there, and a house costs only around $10,000 but you have to apply to the government to supply you with the stilts to build on.

The pot of gold lies in Brunei of course

Ali manoeuvred expertly among the stilts and we got to see some of the village. Some houses had a cage with a cat - apparently they are pets; when the family is home the cat has the run of the house but when they're out, they lock it in the cage to keep it safe. The cats didn't seem to mind. To my surprise, our guide announced that we were going to Ali's mother in law's house for high tea! We entered the house and children were everywhere - in Brunei it is usual to have 10 - 15 children! Don't these people own TVs! (They do. And satellite dishes.) Tea was served from a nice teapot, as well as kueh sapit ("love letters") which are like a waffle cone folded into quarters. It was all very civilised.

Heading further down the river we went into the mangroves in search of proboscis monkeys. I've been pretty lucky with these and wasn't disappointed this time either, with two families spotted. They were very curious about us, unlike the ones in Bako. Ali, with eyes like a hawk, also managed to spot 3 enormous monitor lizards and a snake. Back towards the city there was an amazing rainbow, which I found amusing given that half the city is coated in gold. Guess that old tale finally came true, now to find the Bruneian leprechauns...

Proboscis monkeys

The tour guide dropped me at the market & mall, assuring me that buses ran until 9pm. I walked around but wasn't very hungry tonight. I bought some pulut daging, and the seller tried to tell me it was two pieces for $1. Unfortunately for him I can now read signs in Malay and I pointed out where it clearly said you get 4 pieces for $1. Just then a Chinese guy came up and asked what it was, so to punish the seller I said "I can't eat 4 pieces, here have two of mine!" His name was Ricky and he was from the USA. We walked around for a little while then I went to the mall ("The Mall") and saw the new Nissan March being launched. It's all happening in Brunei. What happens when you can't drink? Everyone heads to the mall on Saturday night. And when petrol is 30c a litre AUD, everyone drives. The traffic was horrendous! From what I could see there were 10 car parks and 500 cars waiting in the vain hope that someone would leave. After waiting for the bus for 30 minutes it dawned on me that I'd been given the wrong information, and I called a taxi from a nearby hotel. Unlike Malaysia, taxis are not common here and finding one can be hard.