Brunei

Tuesday, June 2, 2009--Labuan to Brunei

There are many oil tankers in the water around here. This is a big oil producing area. That's why the Sultan of Brunei has been one of the richest men in the world since the 1960s and lives in the largest (300+ rooms) royal palace in the world. Many of the tankers are supertankers which I have never seen before, since they don't come into port in the Texas cities where I have been. I was surprised to see what a supertanker looks like. I always imagined a bigger ship in all dimensions. But instead, they seem to have about the same size footprint as a regular tanker. They just happen to be 2-3 times taller. That's why they can't get into the ports, I guess; bridge height is the main factor.

The ferry is about like one of those glass-topped tour boats in Paris or Amsterdam, expect there is a hard top instead of a glass top. The design bothers me, since there seems to be limited means of escape if anything went wrong. There are two doors at the front for all these passengers to get to and out of! Thank goodness the weather for my trip was good and no problems occured. It took about 1 1/2 hours to get from Labuan to the port outside BSB (Brunei City).

I exchanged a few Malaysian ringgets for Brunei dollars at the terminal so I could get the bus into town--about 30 minutes away. Everything went smoothly. Only a few of us took the bus, though. Most people here have cars.

It was stressful arriving downtown. There was no information booth at the bus station. I looked around the area and could not find one anywhere. Since then, I have found no evenidence of one, so Brunei is a country that does not operate a tourist information office. But my stress was also due to the fact that I had only limited information I had printed off the internet and no map. Having no map was the biggest problem, especially since I quickly learned that the people here do not know the street names in their city. They know where to go when they want to go someplace, but they apparently just ignore the names of streets when doing so. I asked for a particular street and was sent further and further away from it by two different people. When I returned to the area where it should be and asked someone about it, they didn't know it; yet I discovered seconds later that the shop where I had asked is actually located ON THAT STREET!! When I walked out their door and looked down the street, I saw the sign for the resthouse I wanted.

My room is okay. It is plain and simple, but it is clean, has a bath and good a/c, and has a nice bed. It is centrally located. There is another place I would have prefered staying, but I didn't have enough information to find it on my own without a map or knowing what bus route to take, since it is away from the center of town.

It was easy to find my way around the center of town just by exploring. It's a rather pleasant place with limited traffic problems. The buttons for walk signals actually WORK here and stop all traffic from all directions for 15 seconds. I walked by the big mosque in the center of town, to the waterfront where I could look across and see the water village consisting of hundreds of homes on stilts with many motorboat taxis buzzing back and forth between there and where I was. Looking out over the water, domes of other mosques can be seen in all directions. I found the Yayasan Complex, a shopping mall that is not very successful, partially because it is in two separate buildings with one housing only a large department store and the other one housing only small shops and also partially due to the escalators for getting upstairs in the small shop building being at the ends of the building rather than in the center.

Near my hotel, there is an Indian halal restaurant that seemed popular. I decided to go there for dinner. What a great choice. I ordered paneer palak and two chipatis. The spinach dish was VERY spicy and was filled with lots of chunks of cheese. The chipatis were soft and fresh. UMMM. And it cost only $2.30 U.S. total!

I returned to the waterfront to relax as it got later in the evening. Green lights came on inside the rotunda and in the minerets of the gold-domed Sultan Omar Mosque that is in the center of town. Tired of the water taxi drivers wanting to give me a tour, I finally returned to my room to read for the evening.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009--Brunei

It was cloudy and comfortable this morning, so I went out with plans to walk. I haven't done enough of that on this trip yet.

I stopped at a fancy hotel and asked if they had a map. They gave me one. I could see where I wanted to go, so I headed that way. First, I stopped at the Handicraft Center to see some of the work on display there. It was all nice, but none of it appealed to me personally. Then I contined for about 5-6 km (3.5 miles). Across from the roadway were the water villages, and I even passed buildings out there that are obviusly schools built on stilts, too, to serve the children living there. I stopped at the tombs of two of the former sultans of Brunei. Then I arrived at the Brunei Museum which was my ultimate destination.

The Brunei Museum is large. The building is unimpressive on the exterior, but the interior is well cooled and has nice exhibits about the country. Best of all, admission is FREE! I spent 1 1/2 hours seeing the exhibits about the history, the animal species living in the area, the native costumes and culture, etc. I really didn't know much about Brunei other than it's sultan being rich from the oil revenues. I was surprised to learn at the museum that the original sultan came here from Saudia Arabia and claimed the area with the promise to "protect" the local residents. He ruled all of Borneo and part of the Philippines at that time. The people seem to have put up with it now for hundreds of years! Yes, the U.S. is governed by people who came from elsewhere and lorded themselves over the natives, but what if just one Englishman had come and established rule over all the natives? Would they have allowed it to happen, much less to continue for centuries?

I went outside to wait for the bus to return to town, since the sun was now out and it was near noon. A few minutes later, one of the ladies working inside rushed out with a bottle of water for me, because they felt sorry for me having to be in the heat waiting for the bus.

I explored the colorful market which is under rainbow-colored umbrellas and beside one of the waterways. Mostly, it has lots of dried fish. But it also has fruits and vegetables.

I returned to my Indian restaurant for lunch. This time, I had butter chicken with rice. Again, it was very spicy and delicious. The only problem is that the bones were left in the chicken. That required me to occasionally have to pick up a piece to eat the meat off it. And that meant that I had orange-colored fingertips afterwards.

After resting and reading for about 1 1/2 hours, I went out again. This time I went to the Royal Regalia Museum. It is much like a Presidential Library in the U.S. There are exhibits about the life of the Sultan, displays of the gifts he has been given by various dignitaries, and displays of the royal floats and the costumes of the men who march beside them when he has an official function, the most recent of which was his silver anniversary as the Sultan. Again, the museum was free.

I returned to the Omar Sultan mosque and glanced inside, since it had been closed when I was there earlier. It is a beautifully maintained building.

The day is coming to a close. I've seen everything I need to see here. It's been interesting. Tomrrow, I will take a series of buses to get to southward through Brunei and into Sarawak, another of the Malaysian provinces.