“Sultans of Swing” (Dire Straits)

From Miri seven of the eight of us embarked on a somewhat convoluted journey to Bangar Seri Begawan (or BSB as the locals rather sensibly refer to it), the capital of Brunei. For some unknown reason, crossing into Brunei via a land border rather than the airport requires Australian passport holders to have a visa, so Jo decided to fly straight over the top of Brunei and spend another couple of days in Kota Kinabalu (or KK, bless those sensible locals) in Borneo instead. I was expecting BSB to be a mix of Ashgabat (gold statues of their leader) and Baku (an excellent example of the fact that money, particularly oil money, doesn’t necessarily buy taste). However, I was to be pleasantly surprised. From our short time there, BSB seemed to be a very unassuming town. The money was obviously there, but there was none of the ostentation that I was expecting. The prices, however, certainly did reflect that there is a lot of money around – it was like being back in London. Sunset over the Mosque:

The main part of the city is on one side of the river, and opposite are floating villages – houses, mosques, schools, shops etc that are linked by raised walkways. The river is constantly being crossed from all directions by a flotilla of speedboats piloted at huge speed when empty, and only a slightly more sedate pace with passengers on board. Sitting watching the boats zooming around doesn’t do much for conversation, but is a fascinating way to spend a couple of hours, particularly as the sun sets in the afternoon and all the locals come out to play.

The water taxis:

A floating house (complete with satellite dish):

Friendly local kids waved to us all along our tour:

The city centre is dominated by the Omar Ali Saifudden Mosque – quite an impressive sight from the outside during the day or night, and inside the beautiful decoration is marred only by the presence of an escalator in the right hand corner (not sure where it went). The Royal Regalia Museum provides a useful insight into the fact that foreign heads of state and other senior representatives have very limited imagination when it comes to gifts to bring to the Sultan (what do you give the man who has everything, no really, everything, including 2,000 cars and a couple of helicopters) – how many writing sets and daggers do you think one man needs?

By day: By night:

The Royal Palace sits nestled amongst trees on the banks of the river, but is not readily accessible to the public, and we were afforded only a brief glance on our boat tour of the floating villages. We were lucky enough to do the tour at sunset where we were treated to an amazing sunset, with lightning off in the distance and some fairly intense black clouds which threatened, but never delivered fortunately.