Entering Brunei, feels more like Middle East than Asia
With
the easier bus journey to cross the border we had a relaxed start to
the day and a surprisingly good breakfast thrown in as part of our
room rate. We took a taxi back out to the express bus station and
sat and waited for our International bus. Although Biaramas sold us
our tickets, the bus turned out to be from the Miri Belait bus
company and there were already a few locals on board by the time it
arrived. I suspect that if you are in the know you can pick it up in
town. We were kept company along the way by a few other
(uncommunicative) Lonely Planeter’s, the first we have seen for a
few days.
It took about thirty minutes to get to the border crossing
along what looked like a new road. New estates were being built on
either side and there was a definite feeling that Miri is expanding
fast. At the border we all got off the bus to go through Malaysian
immigration, got back on, drove round to the other side of the
building and got off again. A Brunei bus turned up and we all got on
board, only to be shepherded off again a few minutes later as the
bus to Bandar Seri Begawan is today coming all the way to the border
crossing, something it doesn’t normally do.
A kilometre or two further down the road we reached Brunei
immigration and got yet more stamps in our passports for entering
our fourteenth country so far on this trip. We were then off on our
way through Brunei and heading towards its capital. The bus was a
bit short on the leg room front and Stef in particular was
uncomfortable and fidgeting. He claimed that his leg had gone to
sleep but my tactics of gently thumping it to get the circulation
going again worked a treat and he was soon sitting still again!
At first sight the landscape we passed through was just more
of same of what we’ve seen in Malaysia. I somehow got the feeling
though that here it is more natural and wild whereas in Malaysia a
lot of the land is used for agriculture and is now turned over to
large plantations. It was very lush and green and as we whizzed
along we got our first taste of what wealthy Brunei was like. In the
distance we saw a few oil heads, a sign of the source of the wealth.
By about 1:30 we had already reached the capital so a trip we
had expected to take all ay turned out to be a much shorter jaunt.
To my surprise, the bus asked us all which hotel’s we were staying
at and we were given a lift to the door if we wanted it. I’m not
sure if we just hit on a good driver or whether they all do this but
it was a warm welcome to the city. We’ve opted for the Terrace
Hotel, slightly out of the centre but affordable and with the luxury
of having a pool and free internet access as well.
With time in the afternoon to get out and about we headed for
the Brunei Museum, a little way out of the centre of town. It was in
a large (for Brunei) somewhat imposing building with security men
dressed as soldiers on duty in the main lobby. The first exhibition
was, not surprisingly, all about the oil industry and it opened up
in both of us the wish to know more. Brunei’s wealth is all built
off the back of oil, an industry that only started in the 1930’s.
Depending on who you talk to, their remaining oil supplies will keep
them going for between ten and fifty years so they are already now
starting to think, although it seems not with much earnest, about
what they will do when the oil runs out.
The displays walked through explanations of how oil was formed
in the first place and how the oil companies went about locating new
supplies. They showed how the oil platforms used at sea were built
and put in place and the different drilling techniques used to
extract the oil and gas. It is all pretty clever stuff, including
how they full up the oil tanker here as they cannot bring big
tankers into the shore. Instead they have constructed floating
barges about six miles offshore that are anchored to the sea bed.
Oil is piped from land to the barges and the tankers moor up,
connect the oil hoses and fill up. The whole set up can rotate 360
degrees so the tankers are free to hook up whatever the tides are
doing.
The Islamic Art Gallery was the next section we visited. Here
they house some of the Sultan’s own personal collection. There are
many different copies of the Qu’ran, some quite simple, others
elaborately decorated and illustrated. Some of them very small, the
not much larger than a box of matches but there were also a few
where the characters were inches high. In some of these the shape of
the letters were themselves made out of many small words, almost
impossible to read because of their small size.
This collection was diverse including pieces of furniture,
armour, jewellery, pottery and the tools of the calligrapher’s
trade. Some of the pieces were incredibly intricate. There was a
small filigree gold box that was incredibly delicate. Another box,
made from ivory, looked like the niches in the carving had acquired
a fair bit of dirt over the years. But, when you took a closer look,
it was the shadows created by the box itself as it was like looking
through a piece of lace.
Tasty curry for dinner
Upstairs one of the rooms was dedicated to Brunei traditional
culture. I think we both cringed at the part that told how they
circumcise girls when they are babies but the boys get done, with a
sharpened piece of bamboo, when they reach puberty. They had
displays of typical costumes and scenes from a traditional wedding.
As with the pictures we had seen at the Ethnology Museum in Hanoi,
none of the brides looked too pleased with their lot! Around the
corner they had a collection of cannons which were really
interesting to see. These were not dull, boring bits of metal
because they were all decorated somehow. Some had been made into
crocodiles while others, which I am sure were for display rather
than use, were designed as water buffalo’s and other animals. They
were quite good fun to see.
A quite dull room traced the history of Brunei over the years.
Originally a much larger sultanate, it has had a potted past and
sadly has been carved up and given (or taken!) away over the years
so that little remains. Neither of us had realised that it was only
in 1984 that Brunei gained independence from Britain. There were
brief histories of individual sultans and Stef spotted that many of
them seemed to have passed on (or been bumped off perhaps) before
they could fully take office. The current Sultan seems to be liked
by his people.
The final room was a temporary exhibition about a ship wreck
found in the late 1990’s. A team working for Elf Petroleum (odd as
Brunei is definitely Shell territory) were surveying the ocean about
forty kilometres offshore and came across an unusual bump on the
surface. They sent divers down to have a look and they found the
remains of a cargo ship which had sunk a couple of hundred years
ago. The oil industry divers have now worked with an archaeological
team to recover the remains of the wreck, which had at 13,000 pieces
of pottery in its cargo.
It sounded like a pretty tough job to bring up the artefacts.
The wreck itself has now totally disintegrated so the pots were just
lying on the ocean floor in very muddy and turbulent waters. It was
deep diving and the divers could only work for thirty minutes at a
time before they had to start a controlled two hour ascent back to
the surface. While working, they also had to contend with poisonous
stone fish. Some of the pots are on display in the museum and they
are in remarkably good condition.
We were pretty
much the only people in the museum and wished we had had about
another half an hour to amble around (we were there for just under
two hours). As we found in China, if you are in a museum close to
the time it shuts, the staff follow you around from exhibit to
exhibit switching off the lights and locking the doors behind them
as they go. We hadn't really noticed this until we were almost
finished in the ship wreck exhibit. Stef did his usual and purposely
started to go slow just to wind them up! When we got back down to
the reception area to collect our bags, they asked us to sign
another visitors book and gave us a present from the museum. It was
a large hardback book in a thick protective cover with gold edged
sheets of paper. The book was all about Brunei and it's history. It
was a lovely idea but both us knew that it was far too big for us to
carry around with us and that it was also not the type of thing we
wanted to pay to post home.
After the museum we went back to our hotel, changed and hit
the pool. Small, and shaped like a kidney bean, I had the feeling it
doesn’t really get much use. There were leaves in the water and the
tiled floor around the pool looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a
while. It wasn’t really dirty as such but a high pressure hose
treatment wouldn’t have gone amiss. A soak in the pool was a good
way to cool off though but I was waiting for someone to come running
out telling me to put on a t-shirt and shorts over my swimming suit
as we’re in a fairly strict Muslim country.
In the evening we went for a wander down into the centre of
Bandar Seri Begawan. It was cooler than the afternoon but not a
great deal. Here, as with Kuching, it’s not so much the heat that
gets to you but the humidity. The air simply feels very dense around
you. We ambled down through a very quiet town which brought us to an
equally quiet river front. On the way we passed the parliament
building and had views of the central Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque
which is the city’s old mosque built in the 1960’s.
Along the way we passed a few Indian café style restaurants
that were open. There was an ice cream shop and two coffee shops
that claimed to be open 24 hours a day. This is a new development in
Brunei which has no night life. A new shopping mall complex has been
built at Gadong a few kilometres out of town and this is now where
people seem to go in the evening to shop and to eat out. The taxi
driver who had taken us to the museum this afternoon had recommended
a place to eat in Gadong and another along the river which we went
to look at, discounting it quickly as it was a western style bistro.
In our quest for local(ish) food we headed back to one of the
Indian’s. It was similar to the ones we went to in Penang and to
hawker stalls all over Malaysia. The food has all been cooked at an
undetermined earlier hour in the day and is on display behind the
counter. You simply ask them what the different dishes are, take
your pick and they stick it on a plate and give it to you. This one
seemed a bit better than some though as they took the food away and
heated it up for you, not like the one we went to in Miri. We were
the only people in the restaurant and if we had seen more than one
hundred people in town tonight I would be surprised. It really is
true, Brunei has no nightlife - fantastic!
