Brunei, the richest little country you've never heard of

On Tuesday, after five nights in Manila, we flew to our second stop, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll just refer to our destination as Brunei. We didn’t leave the capital city because just about everything to see in the country, which wasn’t much, was there. Brunei is very wealthy, with oil/gas reserves and production serving to make the Sultan of Brunei the richest monarch in the world. During the 1980s, he was the richest man in the world. Even considering his 1700-room mansion and fleet of Rolls Royces, the Sultan shares wealth with his people, providing universal free health care and free education thru college, as well as maintaining the roads and infrastructure in excellent repair. No income tax, no sales tax, no property tax.

Brunei is a Muslim country, so it has many mosques. We saw a huge gold mosque from the taxi as we were leaving the airport for our hotel. Another huge white mosque was near our hotel and had a fixture, called the Frame Brunei, in a park, thru which people took pictures of the mosque. 

We went to the most visited location in the city, the Brunei Regalia Museum. It showcased gifts from heads of state that have been given to the Sultan since his coronation in 1961. Photography was limited in the museum, but we were able to photograph the Sultan’s Silver Jubilee chariot that he rode in for the ceremony. 

Brunei is quite hot and humid, with temperatures in the 90s and a heat index over 102 every day. There is no public transportation system because the locals all have cars and tourism is very minimal. This is a typical street in the middle of the work day. 

Another sight was Kampong Ayer, the world’s largest stilt village. We had to take a water taxi across the Brunei River (cost: 1 Brunei dollar, about $0.78 US). Our water taxi driver offered to take us up the river to see probiscis monkeys, about an hour total time for the trip, for 30 Brunei dollars ($23.50 US). Since the formal monkey tours started at $98 US per person and I had not booked one, we went with the water taxi driver tour. 

The proboscis monkeys are small, light brown monkeys with an unusually long nose. A shy creature, it lives in mangrove forests and eats mangrove leaves. 

We saw a family of them, including an adult whose nose we saw, but that one stayed farther away, mostly with its back to us, so I only got pictures of the young ones with smaller noses. 

While we were walking earlier, we saw murals decorating a construction fence. One of the pictures was of the local monkeys, so here’s a cartoon version what they looked like.

After visiting the probiscis monkeys, our water taxi driver took us to our original destination, Kampong Ayer. It began to rain, so we walked on the boardwalk to the Cultural Gallery to see the exhibit covering the history of the stilt village. Over 1000 years old, the village features over 4000 structures, homes, schools, mosques, and a fire station. 38 km of boardwalks connect the structures. The Cultural Gallery had a viewing tower from which we could get a good picture.  

We didn't venture on into the stilt village because of the rain. The "sidewalks" were narrow wooden boardwalks and they had become a bit slippery. When we got into the water taxi, the signage at the dock warned of crocodiles. Not wanting to become their lunch if we lost our footing, we crossed back to the main city on another water taxi.

We ate local food at a restaurant across the street from our hotel. The waitress said her favorite was bakso biasa (translates to “basic noodle soup”). I ordered it, very tasty broth. The meatballs had a springy texture that I wasn’t used to, but they were beef. 

Phillip had nasi goreng ayam, chicken fried rice, which he said was good. 

We added Brunei to the list of countries we are glad we visited, but to which we probably won’t return. The people were friendly, but few spoke more than a couple of words of English. We certainly felt safe. The Sultan decreed Sharia Law about ten years ago, so crime is non-existent in the country. The local women wore head scarves with regular Western-style clothes. I saw several local women driving cars, so the country is not completely fundamental. Foreign female visitors are not required to wear a headscarf or cover their knees, but I wore a long skirt while there just to be polite. It isn’t the religion that will keep us from returning. We won’t go back because we visited all the main sights of the country.