Brunei

By Rough Guy'd

My first full day in Brunei and also my last and I intended to make the most of it. I got up early and walked around the town and found a delicious bakery for breakfast. Now, while the thought of a bakery might not be the most exciting thing, I found a lot of interesting local tastes in there including chicken floss bun and Oreo brownies.

After this, I went for a walk to the harbour side, where you can see the floating village. The floating village is an entire village on stilts in the harbour. What makes this special is that the village has over thirty thousand residents, eleven schools, their own police station and fire station as well as full medical facilities, plumbing and electricity. Most villagers there are also serviced by water taxis who ferry them back and forth to the main town.

Now the taxis are also quite happy to take tourists out as well to see the village and I have to admit, it was quite stunning to see the village up close and to see how they lived. My driver was quite informative as well, telling me a lot about the history of the village, the high danger of fires to this type of a community and even the danger of accidental drowning of unattended children. After this, he took me down further toward the sea and the mangroves out there to see the proboscis monkeys.

Though I wasn’t able to take great photos of them, I was pleased to see quite a few of them and unlike many other so called attractions I would later see, these monkeys were swinging in the wild and unaccustomed to humans so I felt blessed to see them like this, with nary another tourist in sight.

Back on dry land, I took the opportunity to see some of the mosques of Brunei. The Sultan of Brunei whose full name I can’t remember (it’s thirty-one words long after all), is one rich guy and he loves to show it. Being a devout Muslim, you can expect the Mosques of this country to be quite fancy and you won’t be disappointed. There was a certain grandeur around them and even as a non-Muslim visitor, you could appreciate the beauty there.

A taxi tour took me to the Royal Regalia and then to the palace gates of the Sultan. Though I didn’t get to really see the palace, I did get to see the Sultan in his bulletproof limousine with a whole delegation briefly. The taxi then took me to see the Empire hotel and country club, five hundred rooms, two massive pools alongside eight smaller ones, movie cinema, 12 hole golf course and a four storey reception area.

Coming down from this level of decadence, I then went with the taxi driver to his favourite lunch spot which was more my type of place; small, bustling, noisy, cheap and great food. The taxi then dropped me off at the airport and my next stop, Singapore.