Bandar Seri Begawan in Brunei Darussalam.
Say that 10 times fast...or you could just say what we did: "where the hell is that!?!".
Brunei is a tiny little country contained in two little patches of land surrounded by ocean to the North and Malaysia everywhere else on the island of Borneo. We went there literally just because we could, as it is close and relatively cheap and easy to get to. Plus, G is chasing her 30th country before her 30th birthday...so we will admit there was an element of gratuitous passport stamp collecting involved in the decision. Lastly, the dates coincided with Valentine's Day, and I don't care what anyone says, for my money, nothing spells romance like a weekend in Bandar Seri Bagawan, Brunei.
We thought that the hard part was going to be booking the flights and accommodation as there isn't as much budget accom available in Bandar Seri Bagawan as there is in other capital cities in the region. As it turns out we found an OK, but by no means cheap, spot with little trouble and the flights were cheap and easy. Harder was, now that we were booked in, figuring out exactly what the hell to do with 48 hours in Brunei.
As well as being one of the richest countries (per capita) in the world and boasting one of the highest standards of living in the world, Brunei is a staunchly conservative Muslim country. There are warnings on the plane as you clear customs and immigration that drug trafficking carries a "death sentence" if caught and convicted. Another notable fact on the topic is that Israeli nationals are completely prohibited from entering the country.
Neither of these rules affected us, of course, but we were affected by a third small fact about Brunei: the sale of alcohol is strictly banned. We hadn't had beers for a while as we'd been climbing mountains and hiking on rainforest islands, but for some reason being literally unable to buy a beer made us unbelievably thirsty!
Right; 2 days in Brunei, no booze. This is gonna be interesting.
We got into town and made immediately for the main mosque Omar Ali Saiffuden Mosque. We took a walk around, snapped some photos, and then went inside for a look. It's a beautiful structure, and it's a nice change of pace after so many months of Buddhist and Hindu temples and our jaunt through Europe where it was one church after the next.
Next, we cruised over to the waterfront and grabbed a drink: a soda water and a Coke, to be accurate, as we perused the Lonely Planet for suggestions and came up with a game plan.
We decided to take a quick tour of the floating city, one if the main attractions in Brunei. Our waiter called his buddy who came flying up the river in his speedboat taxi and swooped us. We played hard ball on the price because our hotel people had told us what was a fair price. As a result our "hour long tour" ended up being more like 45 minutes. That was plenty long enough though...
They euphemistically call it "The Venice of Asia", but whoever came up with that should be investigated for drug trafficking as they were clearly smoking Crack Rock when they dropped that gem. We were in Venice earlier in the trip and I can clear up any confusion by saying that the analogy stops after noting that there are buildings in close proximity to a compound called 'water'.
Still, it's a pretty cool thing to see. There are many hundreds of buildings on stilts above the water. We saw houses, mosques, mini- marts and even filled up on gas from a floating Shell station. Oh yeah, one other thing about Brunei; gas is super cheap; about US$ 0.35 per liter or about $1.40 per gallon... I guess that's what happens when you live in a major oil producing country and there are under 400,000 residents...
And, that's about it to do in Brunei. We'd done most of it in about 90 minutes. We strolled along the water front and then went in to check out an art gallery that was displaying local art. Just as we finished up we heard a familiar voice enter the gallery; it was Christine, a gal we'd met in Kota Kinabalu at our hostel, who is from, of all places, Milwaukee, WI. USA. We knew she was gonna be here, but weren't sure how we'd meet up.
We cruised around for a little afterwards and ended up down at the grocery store where I bought a local specialty called Chakoi, which is Brunei's offering to the world of donuts. It's long, skinny and fried hard, a bit like a churro. They cover it with butter and kaya jam and then chop it up into bite sized pieces. Mine was piping hot, fresh out of the hot oil...it was pretty damn good.
From there we went straight to the sushi restaurant we'd spied earlier that day and went up to check the menu. We were stoked for a change from the standard Malaysian faire and so enthusiastically took our seats and ordered a nice big sushi meal. It was awesome!
After that, we walked a bit more before chancing upon one of the Western chains that is available in Brunei...randomly there are a few Dairy Queens there. G and Chris got themselves a Blizzard and we walked while they took care of putting them away. By this time we'd done a good 3-4 laps of downtown and so decided to call it a night. We said our goodbyes to Chris and went to wait for the shuttle from the hotel to pick us up.
In the morning we had our complimentary breakfast at the hotel. Mine was OK, but G had a rough go. For starters, they wouldn't substitute her chicken sausage for hash browns. Not for love or money. We might as well have been asking the woman to turn straw into gold.
To make matters worse, when her hard boiled eggs finally did show up they were more runny then a soft boiled egg even... they looked like 'blanched eggs' instead of boiled eggs. Needless to say, she was unpleased with the encounter.
We took it easy that morning and cruised into town by bus and ended up at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf for a proper iced coffee and then spent a little time online handling some business before heading to the docks again. We heard that there were Probiscus monkeys down the river and that the water taxis could take you there. It was a beautiful morning and so it was nice to be speeding down the river into some gorgeous rain forest. There were countless birds including a few Eagles, but by far the most common was the White Egrets, we saw about 50 of them. It never gets old. Egret, egret, egret, egret, egret...
Finally we found some Proboscis monkeys. Now, after 4 months in Asia monkeys have become somewhat common place, but the Proboscis is a little special. They're the ones with the really awkwardly shaped and abnormally large nose. Well, we saw a few and they were a ways away... The coolest thing was speeding along the river and through the forest. And, of course, all those egrets...
We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed out to spend the rest of the afternoon checking out museums. First up was the Royal Regalia; a massive gallery dedicated entirely to the much loved and revered Sultan of Brunei. It chronicles his youth, rise to power and and then has a massive section dedicated to showing all the gifts he has received from various heads of state and other royalty from around the world. It was interesting and worth cruising.
Next we headed out to the National Brunei museum where there are several exhibits that we saw; one dedicated to the flora and fauna found in Brunei (did you know that the world's smallest bear, the Sun Bear, is found in Brunei?), another dedicated to Bruneian culture (did you know that it is standard practice to perform a ceremonial circumcision with a sharpened piece of bamboo at the age of 13?), a third dedicated to Gas and Oil in Brunei (did you know that oil was first found in the 1920's in Brunei and that without it the country would likely not exist?).
Upstairs we saw the exhibit on the ASEAN political alliance (the 10 countries that make up SE Asia) and patted ourselves on the back for having been to 9/10, but cursed ourselves for not having hopped into Myanmar (Burma) when we had the chance. Ehhh, maybe next year.
By this point we'd noticed one exceptional thing about Brunei and felt as though our 24 hour sample size was large enough to make the claim: the Bruneians are of the most friendly we've encountered on our trip. And I mean everybody; right down to the sweethearts at Dairy Queen.
It was due to this and the fact that we'd already been given a free ride in Brunei that after the museum we hopped with little hesitation into a vehicle with a kind looking older gentlemen who stopped and told us the buses had stopped running for the day. It was getting ready to rain, and hard, judging by the shade of dark grey in the darkening sky so his offer was even more welcome. We chatted nice enough for the 15 minute ride into town and even initially laughed when we pulled up to our stop and he stuck his hand out and said: "Five dollars". Wait, you're serious?!? Damn, like that, huh? We only had four $1 bills and then big bills, so in the end he gladly accepted the $4 and wished us a great visit in Brunei. He hadn't lost his smile once in the transaction and the money was insignificant...but, the interaction was a reminder that even in Brunei ain't nothing in this world for free!
Incidentally, a minute after we got out of the car a bus passed us meaning that the buses had NOT stopped running as the dude had said. In fact, we took a bus back out to our hotel that evening! Oh well, I still stand by claim as Bruneians being amongst the nicest people we've encountered on our travels.
We ate a surprisingly good dinner at the hotel that evening and then took it easy; I took care of a few things online and G passed the time in bliss: Romey and Michelle's High School Reunion was on HBO.
We woke up early the next morning because we were flying back to Kota Kinabalu that day and had one last sight we wanted to see before calling it a day in Bandar Seri Bagawan, Brunei. The second major Mosque in town, Jame'Asar Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque, was supposed to be worth a visit and since it was a ways out of town we'd not made it out yet. We took the bus into town and transferred to the other line headed West. Annoyingly they do not allow transfers; this ain't the AC Transit afterall.
Anyway, we made it to the Mosque and were told it was the one day of the week that the inside was entirely closed to visitors. Perfect. We walked around the building and snapped a few photos before heading back out to start the journey home.
We got picked up by the bus and had to work another transfer. Instead, we spotted a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and pulled in for an iced coffee and executed an awesomly lazy maneuver. We called the hotel and had them send their shuttle to pick us up while we sat and enjoyed our coffee. I don't feel bad about it either...
We were picked up and we swung back past the hotel to grab our bags before being taken and dropped at the airport where we boarded our literally 20 minute Royal Brunei Air flight back to Kota Kinabalu and to the Lavender Lodge hostel that had been our home in KK for each of the four 1 night stays we'd had in the town.
The visit was spawn from a "why the hell not" whim, but in the end Bandar Seri Bagawan proved to be more then just my favorite place-name of the trip; it is an interesting little spot for a (short) stop off and definitely worth a day or two if you find yourself in the neighborhood.
Bandar Seri Bagawan. Say it out loud...it just rolls off the tongue...