31 October 2009
Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque
We have had a good month relaxing and doing a bit of
sightseeing - not a lot of sightseeing, as a) Brunei is tiny and b) there isn't
a lot to see. We took a day trip with one of the guys who runs a tour company as
well as being heavily involved with yachting here, and visited the two main
mosques, the water village, the museum housing the Sultan's regalia, the Brunei
Museum (proudly announcing its first exhibit collected in the 1960s was a road
kill owl - that gave me a fit of uncontrollable giggles) and a stop outside the
Sultan's Palace to peer through the gates at the palace (see the website http://retardzone.com/2008/03/06/how-to-blow-30-billion-dollars
for a look at the life style) which has 1788 rooms with 257 bathrooms, is
200,000 square metres and houses some of his 5000-odd cars. It is the largest
private residence in the world. Another trip highlight was stopping at the
Empire Hotel (http://theempirehotel.com) to pick up another couple doing the
tour. It is a "six star" resort, with an amazing decor and huge atrium, zillions
of swimming pools etc etc. I swanned past the designer stores (Bvlgari, Hermes
etc) wearing my best $8 Vanuatu market skirt and my $3 Kota Kinabalu market
shirt, accessorised by stylish Croc sandals and a backpack, with my personal
hairdresser (Bruce) in tow.
What the well-dressed infidel about town wears at the mosque
Apart from that, we have had a great rest and the Yacht Club library has taken a
thrashing. We're now ready to head home to see all our friends and rellies we
have been missing.
"That's it! The kids have pissed in the pool again! We're off back out to the ocean!"
Empire Hotel Dolphins
Kampong Ayer Footpath
07 December 2009 Royal Brunei Yacht Club, Serasa
Well,
back from NZ and very much relieved to find all was well with Daemon
- even Timmy the house gecko was aboard to greet us. We are now recovering from
an excess of hospitality. I am now the size of a small bulldozer and Bruce has a
marvellous case of gout from overindulgence in delicious things. In fact we
called it our "Silence of the Lambs" trip, as we seemed to have caused the death
of most of NZ's lamb population. We gave the pigs a hell of a fright too.
We spent the next week finishing boat chores, reprovisioning, filling up with diesel (NZ 30c per litre!) and buying a new solar panel - NZ$ 230 for a 75 watt panel - excellent deal. Maybe now I can work on the website etc without the power-consumption police glaring at me. We were befriended by a local expat couple who were very generous with the use of their car, and also took us for a burn down the river to the Malaysian border town of Limbang for lunch one day. That caused some concern as we got half way (about a 30-40 min trip) and realised we didn't have our passports with us. Much hilarity ensued as the idea of anyone at Limbang checking passports was apparently absurd. And sure enough, we just tied the boat to the jetty, hopped off, had lunch. looked around town and got in the boat and went back to Brunei. Border security in this part of the world only exists in the minds of bureaucrats. The Indonesian officials who were astounded that the Malaysian terrorist leader could get into Indonesia undetected to mastermind the Jakarta bombings are either naive, stupid or lying.
Despite thoroughly enjoying our time in Muara/Serasa it was time to move on, so we up anchored and headed down the coast, picking our way through a thicket of oil rigs just off the coast. Our first stop was Jerudong Marina, which strictly speaking, we should not have been in, as it is the private marina of Prince Jefri, the Sultan's brother, built at great expense (about twice the size of Westhaven) to house his superyacht, "Tits" and its tenders, "Nipple 1" and "Nipple 2". Classy guy. There are even artificial islands in the marina to provide extra shelter from the swell. However, his boating days seem to be over, so the marina is now unused, apart from passing yachties and sheltering fisherman, and the security guards seem to have given up hassling anchored boats, so it is now a very welcome piece of shelter in a coast pretty much devoid of good anchorages.
From there it was up the river to Kuala Belait, a booming oil town with a
huge expat population where we spent a couple of nights and checked out of
Brunei and then headed down the coat to Miri in Sarawak, Malaysia.