The Peaceful Sultanate
Piece of History
The small Sultanate of Negara Brunei Darrasalem (translation: Brunei country of Peace) or Brunei as it's most commonly referred to is located in Northern Borneo where it's sandwiched between two sides of the Malayan state of Sarawak. This tiny broken country is all that remains of a once great sultanate which used to claim territory from the Southern Philippines to Southern Borneo. The Kingdom was so powerful it was once capable of seizing Manila from the Spanish. Unfortunately for it, one of the sultans was not as adept at ruling the land as his forefathers and during his time he either gave away or lost much of the land until it was whittled down to its current size. Fortunately, in the early 1900s oil was found in the country and since 1932 it has been exporting oil. The slews of black gold have helped to make the Sultan one of the richest people in the world and provides its citizens with some of the best social programs and standard of living of any SE Asia country. Thanks to the oil, and the Halal way of life, much of the forests and wildlife remains intact making Brunei home to one of the largest populations of the Proboscis Monkey of Borneo.
We arrived in the capital city of Bandar Seri Begawan (BSB), where most of the tourist attractions are stationed. We had decided to spend our time in Brunei observing the history and Islam culture, something we hadn't done elsewhere on our trip. We were also confined to BSB largely because of the oil. Because the state owns half of all of the oil companies, they have made sure that all of Brunei's citizens are gas guzzlers by making it relatively cheap and easy to buy a car. As a result public transportation is extremely lacking. This was ok, as there were many mosques and museums for us to see in the capital.
The most impressive mosque was built by the king basically for him. I have never been in a building more humbling. It had huge vaulted ceilings and almost everything was made of marble. Vast chandeliers hung everywhere and the spires were each decorated with elaborate mosaic tiles.
May Peace Be With You
The most interesting thing about this place is how "peaceful" it is, and this is exactly what everyone mentions at the beginning of a conversation. As all good Muslim countries should do, this one also prohibits the sale of alcohol. All of the shops (except for the Coffee Bean) shut down by 10pm. People are so trusting of eachother that they willingly pick up hitchhiking foreigners. They are so polite that drivers actually STOP for pedestrians, even when they're jay walking!
Fine Dining
The most eventful night we had while in BSB was going out for a traditional Brunei dish ambuyat. The people of Brunei have historically been estuarine peoples and the sea and rivers have been more of a focus than the land and agriculture. Remanents of the past is still evident in the vast stilted villages where many of the Bruneians still live suspended over the river. As a result of their lifestyle, rice was not a staple and instead the people relied on sago, which is ground up and boiled to provide the center of the ambuyat. We hadn't heard much about the dish, except that it was pure Brunei and Lora was eager to try it. After much searching, we came across a restaurant where this dish could be ordered.
Boy were we suprised when the meal came out! The centerpiece of this odd meal was a large bowl filled with a pearly jelly like mass that KC thought most closely resembled snot. To eat with, we were only furnished with a pair of chopstick with which we tried to attack the gack-y mess. It came with a extremely pungent durian dip that had a very "strong" flavor not all that pleasing to durian neophytes. It was one of the interesting meals, if not the most pleasant, of the entire trip.
Walking on Water
As mentioned previously, a large percentage of BSB's population lives above the water in huge stilted water villages. Each of the houses are connected to eachother by wooden boardwalks upkept for free by the government. The houses have running water and electricity. The taxies are all small speedboats which jet along the river from the capital to the villages. There are even stilted mosques and schools. My main question when rambling up and down the boarwalks was "what about sewage disposal?" I'd look into the situation before jumping into the murky waters. The disappointing thing about the villages was the lack of activity going on outside. People were not chatting on the front stoop or gathering at the local mini-store. Perhaps for safety reasons, none of the children were running around the planks. This is very out of character for a SE Asian neighborhood. It made Brunei seem almost dead.
