Well we made it home. The last leg was a tiring one, leaving the KL Hilton at 10:45 am on Wednesday and arriving at Brisbane international at 10:15 the next day.

We caught the express train to KL International, which was easy. The flight to Brunei left at 2:30 pm, and since we picked up an extra hour we arrived in the capital at about 5:30 pm. Since the connecting flight didn't leave until 1:35 am we decided, rather than staying at the airport, to have a look at Bandar Seri Begawan. On the flight over we were informed there was a free tour of the city for all transiting passengers staying at the airport 5 hours or longer. That turned out to be wrong - it only applied if you entered from Australia/NZ; since we were going the other way we would have had to pay. Given the lack of any organisation apparent in the wrong information we were given, we decided to go it alone. So we went through the process of getting a temporary visa, which turned out to be pretty easy. The immigration people were friendly and helpful.

So we went and got a taxi into the city. The driver warned us that it can be hard to get a taxi back from the city. At the time that didn't make sense to us, but it turned out to be true. The reason is that it is a smallish and prosperous city (about 250,000 people) so most residents can and do drive a car - there isn't much tourism, and most importantly it is a dry country. Hence there are no bars or pubs that people come out of unable to drive. Thus when we started looking for a taxi after 9:00 pm the only ones we found had been parked up for the night.

What a change thisn was from all the other places we have been, where you couldn't walk down the street without being accosted by a dozen tuk-tuk or taxi drivers looking for business.

Anyway we had people offering to drive us to the airport in their own cars, but finally just stopped for a coffee and they ordered us a taxi. So our overall impression of the people, in our admittedly short stop, was very positive. I managed to get a few photos of the mosque and royal buildings before we lost the light, which I have posted in our last photo album.

One thing we weren't warned about was, when we got back to the airport we couldn't get back into the departure lounge. Again because the place is so small they only open immigration an hour or two before a scheduled flight. So we were stuck in the outer part of the airport until almost midnight, when we managed to get back in, and subsequently on the plane and of to Aus. So here we are, tired but happy, and I think richer for the experience of our travels.

Hope to see you all soon and bore you in person with the details.

Cheers

Shane