Aug 2008

Welcome to Brunei. Who goes to Brunei? As it turns out, we do.

We woke us this morning and went for breakfast. We weren't sure if breakfast was included in our room or not. But we went out anyways. After we finished breakfast we learned that it wasn't included in our room. Which is fine because it wasn't worth the price we paid and we can skip it for the next few days.

We looked at the map that we had and decided we'd make our way into the main area of BSB (Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei) . Our hotel was a little out of the way. We thought it was going to take longer to walk downtown, but it took about 10 minutes. Then in another 3 minutes we were back out of downtown, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

First we had to stop and exchange some money. We checked out the HSBC but their fees were ridiculous. We found a little money exchange who gave us a much better rate. Then we started to wander.

There isn't a whole lot in “downtown” BSB. We saw a few coffee shops, some jewelery stores and other stores. BSB is relatively small city in SE Asia terms, there are about 230,00 people, so a little smaller than Halifax. Needless to say, it didn't take us long to walk around the downtown area.

Once we finished downtown it was getting hot. We decided to go to the Royal Regalia Museum. We wanted to see how the Sultan lives. But, this museum wasn't about how he lives. It was about the ceremony around his coronation and his silver jubilee. All I can say is WOW! I'm not sure if the stuff in the museum was really really cool or a total waste of money. The jury is still out. We couldn't take pictures in the museum. This is me outside the museum.

There were rooms and rooms displaying gifts that the Sultan received from dignitaries and heads of states. Some of them were absolutely crazy. There were lots of ceremonial daggers and swords. Tea sets, mother of pearl inlays from Vietnam, a table top replica of Ankor Wat from Cambodia, a gold desk set from the Saudia government. It just went on and on.

Then we found the room displaying everything from his Silver jublee in 1992. He had this huge chariot / parade float that was pushed by at least 100 people who were all dressed in ceremonial robes complete with sword and spear. The chairs that he had at his dinner had gold on them. It just kept going. If only I was the richest or one of the richest men in the world. Then I could do this too. Plus, the museum was free. We did decide it was better that he had this museum instead of having everything tucked away in his garage or garages.

We left the museum a little bit before we finished because it was close to lunch time. We headed back down to a mall to check out the food court. I got fried rice with chicken (Nasi Goreng) and Court got a noodle dish with chicken (Mee Goreng). They were both great. They had a TV showing some dramas or something in the food court. I did see an excellent “wear a motorcycle helmet” ad. They showed this guy on a bike weaving in and out of traffic then they showed a car backing out of a driveway. There was a quick cut back to the guy on the bike with a worried face, then a cut back to the front tire of the bike hitting the car. Then they cut to a watermelon being thrown and smashing open on the cement. Then it faded out and I assume it said wear a helmet. But, I couldn't read it.

There was a good supermarket in this mall. We decided to head there to get breakfast food for tomorrow. I was helping Court shop until I had to run off. Let me put it this way, if I was in Mexico, Montezuma would be getting his revenge. I had to quickly find a bathroom and then it was back to shopping. Brunei is a very Islamic country, who of course don't eat pork and eat Halal food. We were wandering around for a while and found in the back corner completely tucked away and blocked off by the rice, the pork. Or at least the canned meat, e.g. Spam. It was pretty funny that it was hidden from everyone. We also found a great selection of prunes and sausage.

We also found some durians in their shells. They are extremely spiky and sharp.

We purchased our food and made our way back to our hotel to get out of the heat and relax. I had a quick nap and woke up feeling worse, Delhi Belly and a bit of fever. I decided to hit a doctor. We've been to a doctor in four other countries so we should keep increasing that number! A worker from our hotel drove us out to the mall to a clinic. We passed this Mosque along the way.

The clinic was kind of hard to find. We eventually found it and got dropped off at 5:01. The clinic closed at 5:00. But, don't worry it opened again at 7:00. They closed for a couple hours for prayer time. This was fine for us. We had time to go get some dinner. A nice pizza from Pizza Hut! We hoped some “normal” food may help my stomach. I think it kind of did.

We finished dinner around 6:00 and still had lots o f time to kill. We wandered around and decided to do what the Brunei people normally do. We went to the Arcade. We played a Jungle Cruise game where you get attacked by crazy mutated animals and have to shoot them all. There were no pinball games for Court to play. She was kind of disappointed by this.

The clinic opened again at 7:00 and we decided that we'd go over early and line up before everyone else got there. This was a great idea. The doors opened at 7:00 and by 7:15 the waiting room was full. There was a large family (or families) waiting as well. They had three little girls (~10, ~5 ,~1) with them. When they first came in one of the mothers shushed the 5 year old. Then for the next 10 minutes she went around shushing everyone. We didn't want to get in trouble with the little girl so we kept nice and quiet. I got in to see the doctor, got my meds and we were out of there by 8:00.

We took the 01 bus back to our hotel. We realized that it doesn't really have a route it just kid of drives were the people on the bus want to go. It didn't really matter, we got back to our hotel. Tomorrow we have plans to go check out the Sultan's palace and a couple large Mosques. It should be very interesting.

We woke up again this morning without any real plans. We had the morning left in KL, then we had to make our way out to the airport to fly to BSB, in Brunei. Without any real plans for the morning it took us even longer to get going.

We did a little bit of packing then hit breakfast. Court has had a sore throat for a week or so, and seeing this was our last day in KL we thought we'd get her checked out at the clinic. We were going to go to a clinic from LP, which happened to be across town. But, Court asked at the front desk just before we left. It turns out there was a clinic two doors down the street from our hotel. We hit up the clinic, saw the doctor, and Court got some medicine.

After we finished at the clinic, we decided we should go back and check out of the hotel before we went anywhere else. We squared up our bill and got them to watch our big backpacks as we headed out for the morning. On the way to the station, we walked by a cafe with a shelf of hookahs (water pipes) outside.

We saw signs around for a hop-on hop-off bus that does a circuit of the city. Unfortunately, at MYR32, we realized that it wasn't a good value for us, seeing we only had an hour or two to ride the bus. We went back to KLCC to walk around the gardens at the base of the Petronas Towers instead. After shooting some video around the park we went into the mall for some grub. We settled on a Indian restaurant. Actually, Court decided and I was standing next to her in line and got pressured into ordering something by the guy behind the counter. Oh well, it was quite good. After lunch we had a few more things to pick up and then it was back to our hotel to get our bags.

Our trip back was uneventful. We got our bags and went outside to try to convince a cabbie to use their meter to take us to the bus stop. But, once the cabbie found out where we wanted to go he would never use the meter. The conversations would always go like this:

Us: Do you have a meter?
Cabbie: Where are you going?
Us: KL Sentral station
Cabbie: 10 Ringgits
Us: No. It's too expensive. Use your meter and we'll go with you.
Cabbie: No. And he shut his door or point us to other cabbies.

Needless to say, we took the monorail back to KL Sentral station with just enough time to get a sub from Subway to eat before we got on the plane. We got the subs and went back down to where the buses were and everyone started yelling at us to get on their bus to the airport. We choose the actual AirAsia bus. It was quite nightclub swank. It had good leg room, and nice faux leather seats. The actual ride was nothing to write home about.

Once we arrived at the airport we went to check in for our flight. This is always a bit of experience with AirAsia. If you've never travelled to southeast Asia, it's important to remember that lines don't always count or matter. We were waiting in line, or we thought we were waiting in line, when four people came and cut in front of us. As we were waiting longer, even more people came up and started crowding us to the front of the line. But, there was nothing we could do. The family in front of us was trying to check 10 bags. It was crazy. We gave our bags and what was left of Court's sanity to the AirAsia staff, then we were out of there. We had to search for some chairs to eat our Subway spread. It took too long for us to find some chairs. There aren't many in the airport at all. But, don't worry, we persevered and found some.

AirAsia doesn't assign seats for their flights. If you want you can pay extra and buy express boarding which lets you start the race to the plane before everyone else. This means you get your choice of seats. I didn't buy express boarding for the flight to BSB because I didn't think it would be too crowded.

Because of this we got in line as soon as we went through security. We were about 8th in line. We watched the people with express boarding go and then they let us go. The people in front of us weren't too pushy, but there were two Malaysian women who were trying to move as fast as they could to get on the plane. But, they were weighed down by all the stuff that they bought. Don't worry, we beat them on to the plane. We got our two seats together and we were off.

The flight again was nothing special. But, our deplaning experience was outstanding. 25 minutes. From the time our plane doors opened, we went through customs, immigration, got our bags and a cab to our hotel. I didn't think that fast was possible, it was our travel four-minute mile. But, now it will always be our challenge to beat it.

And now we are in Brunei. Tomorrow we will explore BSB some more.