Bouncing by Brunei – Day 2: A Boat Ride and a Bangkok-Bound Flight

Since I had seen everything I had planned to see in Brunei on my first day, I could not escape having to make some last minute plans. That very afternoon, I stopped by a tourist office close to my hotel to book a river cruise. Since it was set to depart early in the morning, I decided to buy some durian crackers for breakfast instead of eating at my hotel. I also bought a whole bag of rambutans for only one dollar fifty, which – despite my best efforts – I was not able to finish by the time I checked out. That evening, I ate dinner at an Indian diner, having given up on trying to find local vegetarian options. The fresh garlic naan was one of the best I ever had, which is sad considering I do not foresee ever returning to Brunei.

I woke up at half past six and got ready to meet my guide. Although we had originally agreed to meet by the Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque, my guide wrote to me just before the meeting time to let me know that she would pick me up at the hotel. A street market had forced the closure of several roads, and my guide judged it easier to drive to the river from my neighbourhood than from the mosque entrance. She explained that the street market happened every weekend as a by-product of a government initiative to encourage people to exercise. Every Sunday, the government closes the roads to allow people to run through the centre, but in typical Bruneian fashion hardly anyone does. In the meantime, the stalls that were meant to accompany the event have become its focal point, and the original intention of the festivities has been distorted beyond recognition.

We did see runners along the banks of the river when we were boarding our boat, but my guide told me they were mostly policemen and people serving in the military. From then on, the only movement we would look for was the jumping of simians: our hope was to find a group of proboscis monkeys lounging in the trees above the riverbanks. Thanks to our ferryman’s keen eye, we found not one but two groups numbering several juveniles and two dominant males. Because of their red hair and large noses, these monkeys were once nicknamed “Dutch monkeys” by the Malays, though I am not sure whether this nickname is still in use. We also spotted two crocodiles and a whole troop of macaques, which are considered pests by locals as they trash people’s houses and constantly get in the way. Indeed, my driver almost ran one over on our way to the quay.

After a quick rest at the hotel, I took one last stroll to the Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque and called a Dash taxi to a mall. In light of what I learned from one of my drivers, I must temper my criticisms of the app: apparently, Grab had promised to expand to Brunei, but after years of fruitless waiting, a local entrepreneur had enough and decided to commission his own app. Besides the bugs I criticised yesterday, the app is mostly all right, and Bruneian drivers actually tend to appear much faster than Grab drivers in other countries.

I had two motives for visiting the mall: to eat lunch and to find some literature on Brunei. The latter is exceedingly difficult to come by in other countries and even on the internet; on my way over from Kuala Lumpur, I had to read de Vienne’s Brunei de la thalassocratie à la rente in the original French, as I could not get my hands on a digital translation. Unfortunately, I discovered that classical Bruneian literature in translation is difficult to find even at Bruneian bookstores: the English-language sections tend to be dominated by a combination of foreign literature, a seemingly popular series on Bornean ghost stories, and poorly written exegeses on the Quran.

My final stop in Brunei, once again facilitated by Dart, was the Ash Shaliheen Mosque. Despite its striking blue roofs, its most distinctive feature is its inner court: with a tiled fountain fringed by palms, it looks like a courtyard one might find in the Middle East or on the Swahili coast. My driver on the way to the airport was surprised I had decided to visit it, but I think it was well worth the time. Having made it to the airport quite early, I spent a good ten minutes trying to figure out how to spend my last eleven dollars and twenty cents. They ended up purchasing several durian-flavoured chocolates and some Brunei-themed postcards.

All in all, Brunei is a singular country from the first hour to the last. Flying in, the airline played such a strict anti-drug trafficking notice that I began to fear I might have inadvertently slipped a kilo of black tar heroin into my backpack. Flying out, the plane did not leave for the runway until a Muslim prayer had been played on all the aircraft’s TV screens. I also noticed that almost all the day’s flights were scheduled for around the same time in the evening, and that leading up to this time, the airport was a ghost town. I imagine the airport’s size would make it inconvenient to provide service around the clock, and so the authorities lump all the flights together.

Unlike some wealthy petrostates in the Middle East, Brunei has not developed into a travel and service hub. Perhaps this is partly due to its geography, but even so the country’s tourist sector is massively underdeveloped for a country so close to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. As a result, Brunei has nothing resembling the glitzy boulevards of Abu Dhabi or the skyscrapers of Dubai. The malls embody the very idea of averageness, while the functionalism of the food courts evokes the previous century more than the future. Besides the fact that most people above the poverty line seem to own a car, Brunei shows off its wealth in numerous mosques and an opulent royal palace that towers above the river’s shabby stilt houses.

The inhabitants of these dwellings are not foreign-born citizens imported to do the country’s dirty work. They are local ferrymen, fishermen, and their descendants who mostly work as low-skilled labour in the service sector. Every few years, a new mosque is inaugurated somewhere in the country with much pomp and circumstance, but many people wait for over a decade to receive government housing. Of course, the sultan is keen to show off his Muslim credentials, and the Royal Regalia Museum proudly displays pictures from his pilgrimage to Mecca. Despite the abundance of the Arabic-derived Jawi script on street signs and advertisements, however, most Bruneians do not really understand Arabic and cannot read the Quran without assistance.