I am melting

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  Bandar Seri Bagawan, Brunei
Thursday, March 24, 2005

Well I safely arrived in SEA and everything is well. Royal Brunei is definitely an airline that I would recommend, except there is no alcohol on the flight. I arrived at the airport trying to locate a cash point that would actually accept one of my bank cards, finding out that the buses stopped running at 6pm, realizing that few people were actually getting off to stay in Brunei and there was no visitor information available. What to do?? ... just go up to two random backpackers (the only ones whom I could find) and follow them. All was well, Mark, Matt and myself clicked instantly. I found out that the only youth hostel in Brunei was fully booked (due to a sports function). Luckily Mark had found a relatively cheap place, extremely difficult task in itself since most places start at $50US per night. We had a triple bed dorm at $17pp per night. Matt spoken Indonesian, which was very useful for the Malay-Brunei spoken here.

There are 400,000 people living in Brunei, it's extremely difficult to immigrate here. English is widely spoken at a high level, we had very little difficulty communicating with the locals. It seems as though cars are a big status symbol here, a good number of people are driving relatively new cars, and very few people are driving a crappy car. There are apparently 260,000 cars in Brunei. I've visited a few Mosques (Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien and Jame'Asr Hassanil Bolkiah). These both were extremely beautiful, you can definitely see how important religion is within Brunei and where money is spent. There are 150 mosques in Brunei, you cannot be more than 2km away from a mosque. I've driven past Istana Nurul Iman (Sultan's palace). Visited Kampung Ayer (collection of 28 villages on stilts built over the water). We still haven't figured out why people have chosen to build their houses over water, maybe because land is valuable??? I've visited the Brunei museum and the Royal Regalia building. They were interesting, I learned a lot about the Sultan and his family, plus you can actually see the gifts given to the Sultan from other countries. It is an extremely clean city with little garbage.

We took a day trip down to Temburong to do a jungle walk through the Peradayan Forest Recreational Park. I've see wild monkeys, turtles, strange insects, snakes. We also visited the Jerudong Park Playground, which they claim is the largest amusement park in the world, however I really don't know how they can make that claim. Wonderland seems bigger and I'm sure it doesn't care with Disneyland. It almost felt like having our own private park, it was almost deserted, we never had to wait in any lines and you could just tell the operators that you wanted to go again. However, about half of the rides were closed.

Food is pretty cheap here, it's usually $1 per drink and $1-$4 per food dish. It's kind of strange, but good eating things like a cuttlefish stirfry during a hike. The hardest part of eating all my food from the markets is that there is no Western breakfast foods available which is my favourite meal of the day. I'm not quite used to eating some of the dishes for breakfast. However, I've heard that banana pancakes are widely available in Thailand due to the high interest from tourists. I love being able to try so many different foods, half the time I have no idea what I'm getting, but that's half the fun. Brunei does have a KFC and McDonald's, and a coffee shop, however these places are very expensive.

The humidity is almost unbearable, sweat is just pouring off of me. The temperatures are mid-30's during the day, and mid-20's at night. However I'm don't think these temperatures include the humidex reading. To me in the sun during mid-afternoon it feels like high-30's to low-40's with humidex. I have never sweated so much in my entire life. During my jungle walk I thought I was going to pass out. My pants and shirt were saturated with sweat pouring down my face, even my forearms were sweating (something that I had never seen before). There is just no relief and no breeze. Luckily our room is air-conditioned as well as most of the buildings.

I ended up changing my flight to Bangkok so that I will only be in Brunei for 3 days as oppose to 5 days. It's been a great experience, however there is only so much to do in Brunei, and I've basically done most things. There are some expensive tours available, however I'm sure that I can see similar places for a lot less money in other countries. Mark and Matt were leaving after 3 days, and to spend 2 days alone would be very lonely, as there are few tourists in Brunei. I can honestly count the number of tourists I see, and that number doesn't exceed 10. It's an expensive country and I'm sure the rich tourists are spending time at their resorts and joining tours.

It's been a wonderful experience, a great starting point in SEA. We were never hassled once by anyone. The only time you had to negotiate a price was for a land or water taxi, and you had to approach them.

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