Brunei: The Little Philippines

As many of you are aware the southern Philippines butts up against northern Borneo with the closest distance between major islands being from Mindanao, Philippines to the Malaysian state of Sabah in NE Borneo. Ever since arriving in Borneo we were constantly hearing about all the Filipinos. It sounded like the place was crawling with them! They work in the oil palm plantations, the fishers illegally cross the border and steal fish, terrorists sneak across the border and steal tourists, they created Filipino markets in many of the cities, etc, etc. I was excited to try out my rusty Kinaray-a again as I hoped that some of the Filipinos would be Visayan natives. Too my surprise, it seemed like we hardly ran into any Filipinos and much to my disappointment the ones we did run into were born and raised in Zamboanga and didn't know a lick of Visayan.

However, upon entering the island of Labuan aka the gateway to Brunei, we were surrounded by the sounds of Tagalog and laughter. One of the first things I realized was that Filipinos, Filipinas especially are LOUD. Much louder than their Indonesian and Malaysian counterparts. And they laugh...a lot. These familiar sounds followed us all the way through the great Sultanate of Brunei. On the bus: a small group of Filipinas chatting away, in the photo shop: both cashiers jabbering Tagalog, and biggest gas of all in the cybercafe: Completely overrun by Filipinos chicka-ing (IMing) friends, family and foreigners; Filipino music was blaring from the speakers.

My question is this: why all of the Filipino imports? Does everyone in Brunei already have a job? Are they not willing to work for the wages offered by the service industry?

We met a nice Indonesian woman on her way back home after working for 7 months in Brunei. She said that many Indonesians, as well as Filipinos make there way to the Sultanate in hopes of make some decent money. She also said that many of them leave after working only a short while because the working conditions were so terrible. She herself was leaving and not looking back.