We have made it to Thailand. What a day! There's never anything good to say about taking an overnight flight to anywhere. So after the first leg of our trip we arrived at Brunei airport a little earlier than scheduled at 5.15am local time. Still dark and very quiet. A local company, in conjunction with Brunei's tourism authority, operates transit tours for people stuck in their airport for hours. Great experience. Such an incredible country...oil & gas rich. We travelled with Zul through the capital city of Bandar Seri Begawan passing some spectacular architecture covered in GOLD. The country has a population of only 400,000 people who are taught to speak English from grade 4. Fuel is about 50 cents a litre! And throughout the country there are 1 million cars! The Brunei people pay no taxes except for a road tax of about $50-$60 per year! On arrival at the waterside we waited for a boat to take us to the water village. That was some experience! A whole village is built on stilts across the water from the main city, with schools, a mosque, fire station, police station. Some of the houses also accommodate restaurants and, after bouncing across water churning with the wash of so much water traffic & then cruising through the "streets" between massive houses, we spent some time relaxing in one of them and tasting some local sweets, before heading back to dry land and another flight.
