千里之行 始于足下

Abode of Peace [13 - 14 August 2011]

Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Outbound (SIN – KUL – BWN)
Pt III: Brunei
Pt IV: Inbound (BWN – SIN – KUL)
Pt V: Epilogue

This trip brought me to Brunei, my 8th Southeast Asian country. Only Philippines and Timor Leste were still missing from my list; Philippines should be easy enough but Timor Leste would be a challenge (in terms of cost and schedule mainly).

Brunei is also country no. 20 on my list of countries visited. Qatar wasn’t included as I was only on transit and didn’t get out of the airport. HK, Macau and Taiwan aren’t counted as well because they are not UN members (although they have their own immigration control).

Our AirAsia flights were really cheap at around S$30; the Tiger Airways ones were double of that but the total amount that I spent on flight was only around S$100. The flights were standard LCC ones; brought me from point-to-point with little fuss. The only delay that I experienced was on the last flight with TR and caused me to miss the last public transportation home. I didn’t blame Tiger entirely though as it had little control over traffic congestion over SIN.

To be honest I wouldn’t recommend Brunei highly as a tourist destination. It has its charm but also has decidedly less character compared to its neighbors Sabah and Sarawak. Perhaps my trip was too short and I didn’t experience all of what Brunei has to offer. However I won’t be in a hurry to return.

Abode of Peace [13 - 14 August 2011]

Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Outbound (SIN – KUL – BWN)
Pt III: Brunei
Pt IV: Inbound (BWN – SIN – KUL)
Pt V: Epilogue

The bus decided that it was the furthest he would go and turned around after dropping us off. Both of us felt that the situation was quite weird but we just sucked it up and walked towards the terminal building.

Five minutes later we reached the Departure terminal.

Like most places in the kingdom, the airport seemed a little underwhelming.

Our bags were scanned before entering the enclosed area and check-in had already began.

There was also an airport tax of B$12 to be paid at the counter. The lady at the check-in counter refused my S$1 coin and forced me to break a B$10 note.

Passing the immigration was hassle-free and we were in air-side in no time.

The washroom was located in a disabled-unfriendly location.

Outside the toilet the counter for rental of day room was unmanned.

The transfer desk in the waiting area wasn’t staffed as well.

A glance at the FIDS revealed that BWN wasn’t a busy airport at all.

There was an advertisement which caught my attention.

After clearing the security we settled in the gate area waiting for our plane to arrive from KUL.

Our ride finally arrived.

S and I both got aisle seats. I was willing to swap seats with the mom of the family who sat beside me but she insisted that it wasn’t necessary.

I spent most of my flight reading while S spent his sleeping.

I couldn’t recall much from the flight except that when we disembarked both S and I made a point to walk faster in order to reach the immigration ahead of the rest.

We were subjected to yet another round of Malaysian immigration and the process was slow as usual with the biometric scanning in place.

After the immigration counters I realized that there was a good place to take photographs of AirAsia’s planes.

We decided to have dinner at the food court which was located beyond the Domestic terminal and the shuttle drop-off point.

The hygiene level wasn’t best and my hotpot noodles was disappointing at best. I was wondering how great the business of the stalls would be if their food were half-decent considering how many passengers pass through KUL LCCT daily.

After dinner it was almost time to check in for our final flight.

A sizeable queue had formed up in front of us.

Although the queue was long, we still had time to hit McD’s after getting our boarding passes.

The queues at the immigration weren’t as bad as the one entering Malaysia despite the biometric scanning.

The inbound from Singapore arrived only after our boarding time. I knew we were in for a delay.

Cabin shots:

We took off late but I thought we could make up for time while flying.

However the captain came onto the PA when we were closer to Singapore and informed that due to heavy congestion we would be circling around for quite a bit before we could land.

Finally we were almost half an hour past our scheduled time of arrival when we landed.

The late arrival had an impact on how I got home. We managed to catch bus 27 out of the airport but the last bus from Tampines towards my place had left.

It meant that I had to spend S$5 for the short cab ride home.

Abode of Peace [13 - 14 August 2011]

Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Outbound (SIN – KUL – BWN)
Pt III: Brunei
Pt IV: Inbound (BWN – SIN – KUL)
Pt V: Epilogue

Stepping outside the airport both of us could feel that the weather in Brunei wasn’t as humid as Singapore’s.

Following the instruction from our guidebook (what else but Lonely Planet), we took a right after exiting the arrival terminals and attempted to find a bus stop.

There wasn’t any bus stop in sight but a nice Bruneian man told us in English that we could flag any of the purple public buses passing by.

Sure enough a little while later a Bus 36 (adorned with Filipino flags on the windscreen) came and off we hopped on it.

A little known fact outside the region is that Bruneian dollar is pegged to Singapore dollar at par; Singapore dollar is accepted as customary tender in Brunei and vice versa.

Thus we were able to pay our B$1 bus fare using a S$2 note and the driver accepted without any fuss.

It didn’t take the most direct route to the capital. Instead it went through several residential estates and passed by quite a few buildings.

Closer to town we were stuck in a rather heavy traffic. No idea why though.

The bus reached its terminal after almost 30 minutes since leaving the airport and we decided to take a look at the K.H. Soon Resthouse located a few blocks away.

However we struggled a while with our map-reading and orientation of the small town.

Somehow we managed to stumble on the guesthouse and went in to enquire about the rates. We were told by the receptionist that double with attached toilet is B$45 and the one without is B$40.

We did take a look at the rooms but couldn’t make a decision. We told the receptionist that we would like to shop around first and decided to check out Terrace Hotel, the one which we passed by earlier on the bus.

It was a few minutes walk up the road that we came from and seemed kinda quiet.

Its receptionist quoted us the price of B$80 and offered us the key to a double room at level 2. We went to check it out and decided that it was probably worth the extra money for just one night.

Back at the lobby I asked the receptionist whether it was the best price that he could offer; in the end we agreed that we did not need breakfast since S was fasting and settled on B$75. The receptionist also gave us the password to the free WiFi which worked exceptionally well throughout the stay.

After freshening up, we decided to take a walk around BSB before the sun set.

Slightly down the road from our hotel were food stalls selling food to those who would be breaking fast soon.

We decided to explore a bit more and promised to check out the stalls later.

More scenes of BSB:

Soon we reached Kampung Ayer, probably BSB’s most famous landmark.

Across the river was Kampung Ayer.

The boatman in the above picture offered us a tour of the water village for B$20.

With the memories of sea-sickness in P. Dayang still fresh in my mind, I didn’t want to go near the flimsy boat (although S fancied a ride around the village).

In the end I was happy just taking pictures from the shore.

After lingering there for a while, we turned back inland and walked through Yayasan Complex (shopping mall in downtown BSB).

Dinner time beckoned and we stumbled upon Ayamku, which we found out later was featured on Lonely Planet.

“Brunei’s answer to KFC, this is one of the cheapest places in town to get a meal. You can get a big piece of fried chicken, some rice and a drink for about B$3. And the chicken is surprisingly good. One note: this may be purely coincidental, but many of the diners here seemed remarkably plump for Southeast Asians.”

ROFL!

There was a set meal for two at B$10 which looked like this:

I remembered to take photos of our food because S had to wait for the time to break fast.

The chicken looked dry on the outside but to our surprise they were actually quite juicy. The chili sauce was not bad as well.

So over dinner we were discussing about our big plan of bringing the franchise to Singapore. Lonely Planet did get it spot with this recommendation.

After dinner we retraced our way towards our hotel.

BSB at 8pm looked kinda like 3am in Tampines.

Which was empty.

Perhaps it was due to Ramadan and many were still in the mosques for sermon.

The food stalls that we passed by earlier were closed by the time we passed by them again. However we discovered that there was a small Hari Raya bazaar nearby.

At there S bought not one but two baju kurung for his new nephew and neither fit. The nephew will need to wait a couple of years to wear them because his uncle couldn’t judge the size.

Although our guidebook indicated that there was a hawker opposite our hotel, we missed it completely on our way out.

Its light attracted us on our way back and we were debating whether to eat ambuyat, Brunei’s national dish at one of the stalls.

In the end we didn’t as we were too full and went back to our hotel to wash up.

We did go down again later for some drinks.

The next morning we did make full use of our hotel stay and slept in till almost 12 noon.

After checking out, we decided to check out the Royal Regalia Museum which was around 5-10 minutes walk away.

To our surprise there were actually tour groups (from China) visiting the museum. Besides us there were quite a number of other tourists as well.

Visitors were requested to leave their shoes at the doors and had to deposit their bags, phones and cameras into the lockers.

However we were allowed to take photographs of the lobby area (where there were some exhibits).

There were quite a number of exhibits inside the museum and we took quite some time to browse through all of them. There are some interesting items (for eg gifts given by Lee Hsien Loong to Sultan Bolkiah) and we did learn a bit of Bruneian history. However I wasn’t sure if I would pay to enter if they charge admission fees.

After leaving the museum, I went to get some food from Jollibee, a Filipino fast-food chain, while S went to Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque for prayers. Effective time management indeed.

I had to wait for a while before S returned from his prayers. It was by then time to return to the airport.

We were quite lucky to find that the bus to the airport was leaving soon when we arrived at the bus terminal.