17. Brunei @ Borneo - Bandar Seri Begawan

We were picked up by a nice minivan from our hotel in Miri. It only took us and the one other passenger less than three hours to go through the border between Malaysia and Brunei and drive to our hotel in Bandar Seri Begawan, where we were dropped off.



This map shows the route we went from Miri to Bandar Seri Begawan.

This map shows South East Asia. The light parts are Malaysia. Brunei is the little country on the island of Borneo inside Malaysia.

Brunei regained its independence from the United Kingdom on January 1984. Economic growth during the 1990s and 2000s transformed Brunei into an industrialized country.

The majority of Bruneians are ethnic Malays, with Chinese being the most significant minority group, but everybody speaks Malay and quite good English.

Islam is the official religion of Brunei and at least two out of three adheres to Islam.

When we visited mosques Carina had to wear a scarf...

As a Sharia country the sale and public consumption of alcohol is banned, but Non-muslims can bring in as much alcohol as they wish for, for own private use.

Bandar Seri Begawan is the capital and the largest city of the Sultanate of Brunei. The population is estimated to about 200.000 inhabitants.

It was Friday, when we arrived and on Fridays the whole city closes down between 12 noon and 2 pm. Everybody goes to the nearest mosque or follow prayers on TV.

At 2 pm. we went to town to do a city walk. We went by water taxi. The water taxi service is known as "penambang" and is used for transportation between downtown Bandar Seri Begawan and Kampong Ayer and is hailed from the numerous docking parts along the banks of the Brunei River.

All the small boats on water are taxis. We had to take a taxi to go to our hotel, Every time it costed us 1 Brunei dollar each. 1 Brunei dollar = 5 dkkr or 0,8 euro.

We visited the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque.

It was built in year 1958.

It is beautiful, all white with a huge golden dome and several minor.

The interior walls are made out of Italian marble.

It is written that there are tunnels, which are used by the sultan on journeys through town.

The parade field near the mosque has a huge picture of sultan Hassanal Bolkiah.

On our city walk we among other saw the Royal Ceremonial Hall or Lapau, which is used for royal traditional ceremonies. The sultan was crowned on 1st of August year 1968 in Lapau. The interior of the Lapau and sultan's throne are decorated in exquisite gold. The place is unfortunately not open to the public so we could only see it from the outside.

We went to see the Royal Regalia Building, which is a museum devoted to the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. Basically, it's all about the Sultan. The Royal Regalia Building was officially opened the 30th of September 1992. The main gallery displays the coronation. To enter the Royal Regalia Building, you have to take off your shoes and leave them outside the building.

You're able to put on soft slippers provided at the door. So unless going bare feet, people go hissing around in the slippers the huge maze of a building. While going to the bathroom it is possible to change your hissing slippers into a pair of rubber-made flip flops so you won't get your feet wet. Very convenient.

Then we saw the Clock Tower and

had a fast dinner before we took a water taxi from the Kianggeh market back to our hotel.

The market was full of nice fresh vegetables and spices.

On the way we visited the Kampong Ayer or "water village" because

the people we were sharing our taxi with were going home.

The village contains of houses on stilts and stretches about 8 km. along the Sungei river. It is the largest of its kind in the world with approximately 30.000 residents. The Kampong Ayer is over 1000 years old and a well preserved national heritage site.

The weather was like on the rest of Borneo. Cloudy and a little rain. We checked on the internet and there it says that it should rain two out of tree days, with an annual rainfall of 2873,9 mm.

The next day we went to see the Empire hotel and Country Club which is said to be a 7-star-hotel.

It's said to cost over a billion dollars when sultan's brother Jefri built it. The hotel is really big and shiny. Normal people can visit it too, just to go and see how the rich live. So that was what we did. :)

The entrance of the Empire hotel has a fountain.

There's a piano in the main lobby. When we visited the place, no one was playing.

The escalator down from the main lobby brings you to the backyard...

Where the swimming pools are.

The hotel complex has it's own cinema, many restaurants, golf club, diving center and basically everything else you need. It doesn't really fit in the picture as it's quite large.

We got to the hotel with a public bus which doesn't always go there. Only if there's cheap tourists like us going. We had to wait for a long time to get picked up by another public bus. Taxi would've been about 20 times more expensive.

On our last day in Brunei we went to see another huge mosque, the Jame'asr Hassanil Bolkiah mosque. The sultan built it as a present for his people to commemorate his 25 years in charge in 1992. Makes you wonder who was the one getting the present.

Also the mosque was hard to get to fit into one picture.

The sultan has a private escalator to the mosque. No one else is allowed to use it.

Outside the mosque there are long corridors to leave your shoes before entering.

After the mosque we took a bus back to the town and a water taxi to Kampung Ayer, the water village.

We wanted to have a little tour around the village and to see the sultan's palace that's behind the trees and hard to see basically from anywhere even that it's really big. The palace is not open to the public except on the annual Islamic celebration of Hari Raya Aidilfitri (the festival at the end of the Muslim fasting month) when the palace receives about 110,000 visitors over a three-day period. The palace is also open to Muslims during 10 days of the Ramadan.

Sultan's palace behind the trees.

After about 15 minutes in the boat (which the driver drove really slow to save the fuel) it started to rain. So we decided to embark to Kampung Ayer.

As it was still raining we waited and sit under a shelter. We spent our time taking pictures about everything we could see. Like the neighbor pier...

The city center...

And Carina.

The tide was quite low so we could see the bottom of the river.

And somebody had been drinking in this non-alcohol country. Bad muslim!

The "streets" of Kampung Ayer didn't have any railings and it was a bit scary to walk around there.

Locals use a lot of those water taxis.

After three nights in Brunei we took a boat back to Malaysian Borneo. We went to an island called Labuan, just about an hour boat ride away from Brunei's coast.