I quickly realised the benefits of travelling alone when we woke up at 6:30am. Whats the point of having a nice bed in a good hotel if you cant sleep in it??
When mum and dad said we were going to Brunei, Simon and I had to look on the map to find out where I was going to - I thought we were going to Brunei? Quick geography lesson: Borneo is an island, the bottom half of which is Indonesia. The north half is Malaysia but there is a small sultante of Brunei in the middle of the Malaysian coast. So we are in Brunei and are going up to the northen tip of Borneo, in Malaysia. Get it?
As everything had been organised at the last minute we didnt have anything planned in Borneo apart from a 2 night jungle safari and a night on a mountain, but that wasn't til the second week. So we wandered around the capital of Brunei that morning and soon realised how different this place was to all the other countries we'd been to: There was no tourism industry. The tourism office itself was closed down and just referred people to a small agency on the 2nd floor of a derelict building. As well everyone was clean, quite and I'm not sure how to further describe it. It was just different. As a car stopped to let us cross the road, mum reckoned it was because there is no beer in the country but Dad and I quickly squashed the idea.
We had a odd looking beef/chicken pancake thingo for breakfast which was good but we must have stuck out as tourists in the small local diner. Before long we had a tout trying to get us on a boat ride around the harbour, looking at the water villages and palace. We had wanted to do it anyway and after haggling the guy down from 40 to 20 mum reckoned we had a good deal. Of course later we read that it should be about 10 bucks! I had a bit of the runs, most likely due to dehydration, so the trip wasnt that enjoyable for me even if interesting. All the houses had been built on stilts in the water, there were even a few schools and apartment buildings amongst them! The local fire brigade was of boats. Great little villages.
We stuffed around a little more on the harbour discovering that there is nothing, at all, worth buying in Brunei. The sultanate is crazily rich - everyone here gets free schooling, healthcare etc. For the Sultans birthday one of the princes had tried to rent Disneyland. When unable he built one himself and opened it free of admission for 6 years until 2000. Now, with the entry cost at 4 dollars, it is run down and only good for the small rides! Another story is one of the princes was put as head of finances. He managed to swindle 4 billion dollars into personal items like airplanes and cars - 4 billion dollars! He ran away to England and the Sultan didnt care until he realised that it was more like 20 billion. How the hell do you take so much money away with noone realising for years? Damn oil tycoons. We saw a sign for diesel - about 20c a litre, straigh from the platforms.
There was a way to see the richness of these guys easily - the $1.1 billion Empire hotel. It was more like a resort - huge buildings, nice private beaches, Jack Niklaus designed golf course. It had bowling alleys, theatres/cinemas, 6 restaurants and more. We just wandered around inside as though we were staying there, but I dont think we fooled anyone in our shabby clothes. Dads shirt was covered in sweat that didnt seem to go away. We had a high afternoon tea - fancy spiced tea, scones and cakes. It was expensive, especially in my standards, but there was no other way we were going to experience this hotel. We did consider going to the dinner buffet for 60 bucks each, but with no buses we would be stuck here for the night!
There wasnt much else to do except to visit the city mosque. We had tried earlier in the day but it was closed to tourists as they were praying. This time we were lucky and took off our shoes to walk up the steps. We signed in, received our black robes and went in to find out we couldnt go further than 3 metres from the door! They had a carpet that we werent allowed to go beyond. So after all that we could only stand back and admire the main foyer, nothing else, definitely not close up! We did see an atm and an escalator, so now we are wondering what really goes on in there.
Tired and stuffed with cakes we went for a swim in the hotel pool. Well mum and I did whilst we watched dad sweat away in the gym. We drank another bottle of wine by the water, hiding it everytime a waiter went past as we weren't sure if we were allowed to drink it or if it would be offensive. For dinner we had a "steam boat", a pot of boiling water where you put cook your meal in it on your table. It was fun and dad had his traditional banana split before we hit the hay.
