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BRUNEI
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We took a 5-day trip from Hong Kong to Brunei in June 2001.
You went where?
Okay, so Brunei isn't exactly a tourism powerhouse. But we found ourselves in Hong Kong with a long weekend, and wanted to go someplace we hadn't been before that was safe and within easy reach of HK. Brunei qualified, and had the added benefit of being a place where we could see a good proportion of the sights in just a few days.
For the record, Brunei Darussalam is a small sultanate located on the coast of Borneo between the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah. The Sultans of Brunei used to rule Borneo (the two words were originally the same), but British colonialism put an end to that. Brunei itself was never an actual colony, but has only recently (1980's) regained full independence from Britain. The Sultan is famously one of the richest men on the planet, due to exploitation of the country's oil resources, and his enormous wealth has had benefits for the other 2-300,000 Bruneians as well - no income tax, lots of free government services, etc. (though we didn't see too many of them with a fleet of Rolls Royces like the Sultan has). And the oil wealth has allowed Brunei to keep more than half of the country covered with lush rainforest, unlike the rest of Borneo.
Brunei is an Islamic state, with the Sultan being the religious leader as well as the secular leader. It is a relatively reasonable brand of Islam, however, and the large non-Islamic minority (Buddhist Chinese being one of the larger groups) doesn't seem to be terribly persecuted. No one's blowing up giant statues sacred to other faiths or taking machetes to Christians. There doesn't seem to be a problem with women working, driving, being educated and so on. Essentially, they seem to have enough self-confidence, financial comfort, and education to be relatively tolerant and moderate (relatively). Here's a useless fact for you: the people of Brunei use both the Roman alphabet and an Arabic script to write their Malay language (and a lot of people also speak pretty decent English).
Bandar Seri Begawan
We mostly spent our time wandering around the capital, BSB, with frequent returns to the hotel for air conditioning and Coke. The tropical sun really sapped the energy out of us, especially around mid-day. We saw quite a few locals whose mid-day approach was just to lie down in the shade, but we failed to take the hint. At least we managed not to burn ourselves too badly.
BSB is not the most exciting place in the world, to put it mildly, and we would get downright bored and claustrophobic if we were there for any length of time (like one more day), but there are some sights worth seeing. The Royal Regalia Building houses a bunch of memorabilia from the current Sultan's coronation, including a replica of the parade and a large display of the gifts that he received. Very expensive gifts, with the occasional exception like the (presumably deeply symbolic) rope that some indigenous village gave him. The Regalia building was the first thing we went to see, which is appropriate. In Brunei, everything is about the Sultan, everywhere, all the time. If a sultan doesn't own it, one probably built it, or is memorialized by it, or it's named after a sultan, or it's "royal." The airline is Royal. It's also mighty Islamic - the flight attendants wear head scarves, the food is halal (kosher), and they play an Islamic prayer on the monitors before takeoff. And you know how airlines intermittently show flight path, speed, etc, on the monitors? This airline does that too, but also shows a little compass-type pointer indicating the current direction of Mecca. Incidentally, hotels also put a discreet little "Kiblat" arrow on the ceiling of each room for the same purpose (but that's not unusual even in the US).
All of which brings us to another of the sights of BSB - the big mosque (we can't be bothered to look up the name) which was built by...guess...yep, a sultan. It's an impressive and photogenic building set close to the center of town. Our guide book mentioned that the locals ran to the mosque for prayers all the time, but frankly we didn't see much religious fervor. We heard the prayer calls throughout the day, the first before dawn and the last after sunset, and we saw some people show up at the mosque each time, but mostly people just kept doing what they were doing. No whipping out the prayer mats every time like we half-expected them to. The amplified calls to prayer sound pretty cool, by the way, echoing across the town from the tower at the mosque. Weirdly Arabic for such a Southeast Asian riverside town. We didn't feel comfortable going inside the mosque, so it entertained us for only as long as it took to walk around it. But it looked cool. (We came back in the evening and snapped a few more photos, which was fairly tricky with no tripod. And yes, it seemed, um, mostly safe to walk around after dark.)
More than 30,000 people live in BSB's water village, a huge maze of houses on stilts in the river/estuary that surrounds BSB. We paid (too much to) a local boatman for a water taxi tour around the water village, and it took about an hour. The village is not just houses, but mosques, police stations, power substations, large schools, and so on, all built over the water on stilts. Transport to and from the village is entirely by small boat. Further out, there's even a section where all the houses look the same, and are logically arranged - a new subdivision built by the Sultan. The Sultan actually has offered the water villagers pieces of land in return for leaving the water village, but they prefer to live there as their ancestors did (the water village was there when the first Europeans arrived nearly 500 years ago). But their old habit of throwing trash into the water is causing serious pollution now that it includes modern waste like plastic bags and Coke cans. By the way, these people may seem dirt poor at first glance, but closer inspection reveals an awful lot of satellite dishes, modern electronics, well-built houses, nice boats and so on.
Our water taxi ride also gave us a glimpse of the Sultan's palace, supposedly the largest residential palace in the world, which cost something like US$350 million. It's good to be the Sultan.
And finally, we found our way to the local Handicraft center, where the goods are interesting but overpriced. Mainly silver pieces (including some nice napkin rings) and intricately patterned weavings, with a few wooden and brass items.
Temburong
If you're paying attention, you'll notice that all of the above could basically be seen in an afternoon (if you weren't ducking back into the hotel frequently). BSB is frankly boring. So we got out of town for a day by arranging a tour to visit Ulu Temburong National Park, to see some of that primary rainforest we'd heard about. This tour requires a boat ride downriver from BSB, across Malaysian waters, and up another river to a town in Temburong. Then you drive over to another river and take a longboat trip up that river. About two-and-a-half hours travel time.
It was pretty uneventful until we reached the longboats. These are long, narrow boats with an outboard on the back, used to go upriver to the park. The water level was very low, so the guides actually had to get out and push to help the boat through some of the little rapids (too shallow to use the outboard). Aside from the engine noise, it was a very cool trip, sitting almost in the water with deep rainforest towering on both banks and occasional bird calls echoing across the river. By the time we arrived at the camp, we felt like we were deep into the jungle. Which we were. The longboats are the only way to get there.
We took a hike into the rainforest before lunch. It sounds so innocuous, 3/4 of a kilometer and 1600 steps, on a raised walkway. But in the heat of the day, it was pretty tiring. Along the way, the guide pointed out various plants that could be used to stop bleeding, or as "viagra," or to treat poisoning. This last one has to do with the indigenous Iban people and their historical penchant for headhunting using blowguns and poison darts. They don't do that anymore, but the Muslims (our guide, for instance) clearly think of them as godless heathens (they drink, eat pork, that sort of thing). The Ibanese live in communal longhouses, and there's apparently a standing offer from the Sultan to provide a separate home (and some cash) to any of them who converts to Islam. The rationale being that a Muslim couldn't ethically continue to live in the longhouse.
Our jungle walk took us across the river via a long hanging bridge and up the hill, eventually leading to a 150-foot-high platform that is part of a walkway through the rainforest canopy. It's basically just a scaffolding, stabilized with cables. The view from the top was 100% rainforest as far as the eye could see. Unfortunately, there isn't much wildlife to be seen in the middle of the day. All we caught sight of during our walk were a skink and some gigantic ants (maybe an inch long, and hefty). We would absolutely recommend visiting this park, but we would also say that it would be well worthwhile to take the option of staying overnight in the cabins for a chance of seeing some wildlife in the morning or evening.
As it was, we had to get going because the ferry back to BSB doesn't run after dark. We had a fantastic home-cooked Malaysian lunch (prawns and chicken with excellent spices, yellow watermelon for dessert), swam a little bit in the surprisingly cool river, and headed back down the river in the longboat.
No diving for you! What we missed...
On a final note, George had hoped to get in some diving in Brunei Bay, which has fairly famous wreck diving (you would usually go from the Malaysian island of Labuan), but the dive shop he contacted advised that visibility sucked and it wasn't worth going. Other stuff we didn't do: visit the beaches and islands around BSB, take a tour of the oil fields(!), and most notably, visit the Jerudong Park Playground, which sounds like a wonderfully cheesy theme park that the Sultan has provided (nearly) free of charge. Oh well, maybe another time.
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