The good oil
25 February 2008
Brunei
Before I got there I’d always had the overwhelming impression that Brunei was an Arabic country. From the name, to the religion and the oil, to the fact that there was a Sultan, it all conspired to create an impression that somehow a little piece of the Middle East had broken free and drifted into South East Asia. All this coloured what I expected to see even before I got off the ship and in some ways it was correct but, in reality, it wasn’t close to the real country. In the end I came back not really too sure what I’d seen or where this country fit in.
We had a safety drill (life jackets on, reporting to our life rafts) and I had another tour that I had to be ready for at 1pm so I didn’t have an opportunity to get off and do any exploring on my own. We had been told that there was nothing to see around the port itself and the town was a 45 minute bus ride away so add the trip in and the trip back and I had no time to spare between the end of the drill and the start of the tour.
Kind of frustrating to have to just sit and read in my cabin for those couple of hours but the tour sounded okay. It was called “Leisurely Brunei & English high tea”. It was only three and a half hours long, didn’t involve much, or any, getting off the bus and ended with high tea in what was supposedly one of the most luxurious resorts in the world. I wasn’t so sure about the bus part, without the opportunity to actually get out and taste the air but it was Sunday and apparently the town was going to be dead anyway. The high tea part sounded interesting although I’ve had a bit of a hit and miss history with high teas in various parts of the world. To date I’ve judged them all by one I enjoyed at the Victoria Falls Hotel in Zimbabwe. For both food and view it has been my benchmark and none have come close. I hoped that this one may. If it didn’t, my next hope would be Hong Kong.
The bus that we got on was big and new and reinforced my preconception of what to expect in an oil rich country with probably one of the highest per capita incomes of any country in the region. Our guide was an Englishman who had been living in the country for a while and he turned out to be both knowledgeable and enthusiastic about Brunei. We set off out of the port with just a couple of stops scheduled for photos at the Water Village and the big mosque in the middle of town before high tea.
The countryside was a bit of a contradiction. Our guide explained that (the figure varies depending on sources) about 75% or 85% of the country is still virgin forest and that the exporting of timber is illegal, a law that is strictly enforced. The contradiction was not to this statement but more what you would expect to see in a South East Asian countryside as you stare out the window. The jungle was still there and it was green, wet and lush but there were no large tracts of farming. No paddy fields or plots of corn. Even the houses were contradictory with few little villages or groups of houses of a “rougher construction”. Those types were still there but they rubbed shoulders with huge modern houses and were certainly in the minority. The guide explained that it’s impossible for a foreigner to own property in Brunei but that locals are regularly given either a house or the land to build one. The rougher houses were rough but the larger ones were big and most wouldn’t have looked out of place in better neighbourhoods in many cities. In a way they almost had the look of holidays homes set in a tropical locale and mingled among the homes of the locals.
The amount of rain that Brunei receives was also obvious from the construction of most of the homes. Two stories seemed the norm with the bottom sometimes open or probably used as storage or car parking. The massive drains running alongside the road were also testament to the amount of rain if they were ever used to their full capacity.
Our first stop was at the Water Village, or more accurately across the water from the Water Village. The village is a massive collection of homes built on stilts and they extend out into the river. Far from the random collection of shacks that may spring to mind most of them seemed to be full sized houses that simply happened to be suspended above the water. From our vantage point it all looked more like a crowded town built down to the water’s edge and it was difficult to tell exactly how far out into the river the entire mass extended and where the actual river bank was. The most interesting thing to watch was the number of water taxis zooming up and down and across at high speed. I would describe them as extra long and narrow dinghies, certainly of solid construction but all powered by huge outboard motors that would push the bow far out of the water and shoot a big rooster’s tail out behind them as they moved like little rockets from one side of the river to the other.
Ranging along our side of the river were a number of little concrete piers with bus shelter like structures and steps leading down to the water. There was a regular traffic in people crossing from one side to the other and the guide explained that many people in the village worked in town, catching a water taxi in the morning across to where they park their car in one of the packed parking areas before reversing the process in the evening. Looking at it from the far side of the river this village had a far more solid and permanent feel than the water villages of places like Hong Kong that seem to consist more of boats tied together. It probably would have been an interesting place to try and explore but we only had a brief photo op before we boarded our bus and headed off to the next stop.
All of the information we’d been given and the majority of pictures you will see of Brunei are of the big mosque in the centre of town. It is huge; with so few tall buildings in the capital it dominates its space and sits surrounded by water on three sides. Real gold covers the big domes and the pure white walls add to a glow. Unfortunately for us the biggest dome was covered in scaffolding so we only stopped for a minute and stared at it through the bus windows. The guide apologised that it wasn’t really the photo op that it normally is and promised us an even better one where we would be able to take photos that would really do the concept of a Bruneian mosque justice. He turned out to be right. We arrived during one of the prayer periods so we weren’t able to go into the mosque but the outside was spectacular with its golden domes and its walls that looked like they were made of Delft pottery. The sun was hidden behind an overcast sky but the building still seemed brighter than it should have been and I went a little crazy with my camera trying to capture it from every imaginable angle. I also took a couple of shots of all the other tourist from the all the buses trying to do the same thing.
Our next stop was the empire hotel for high tea but our ride took us past a couple of “homes” belonging to members of the Sultans family. I say home in a fairly loose term because some of them looked like they would have made fairly substantial hotels. The strange thing about them was, apart from the size, that they sat in among other homes in suburban neighbourhoods as if trying to blend in. The size of them made fully blending impossible but to drive among standard houses and then be presented with the house of royalty was funny.
Another thing we drove past was an enormous theme park. When it opened it was described as the Disneyland of the East, before Disney built parks in the East. It was one of the projects of the Sultans brother. This was the brother who was eventually asked to leave because of his profligate ways, racking up hundreds of houses all over the world as well as managing to spend obscene amounts of money on all sorts of strange projects. This theme park was one and as we drove it became obvious that this was a massive project and would have been extraordinary in its day. Now it only opens for a few days each week and all of the major rides have been sold, leaving it a place for young kids. It was really sad for a fan of theme parks like myself to see it in its present state and I can only hope that something is made of it soon.
All through our tour the Empire Hotel had been built up as the highlight. A seven star resort hotel that would dazzle us with its opulence and grandeur. A build up like that could really only lead to one thing and I have to admit to being a little disappointed. It’s not that it’s a bad hotel or doesn’t have the ability to dazzle; it’s just that it wasn’t anything more than many other places of a similar ilk I’ve walked into. I still had the feeling that there would be a hand on my shoulder and someone asking me if I was really supposed to be there and not at the McDonalds down the road but, to be honest, I’ve seen better. Admittedly I didn’t get to see much of it and the huge marble clad empty spaces of the lobby and atrium are a style of architecture that doesn’t appeal to me. For those reasons alone it was probably a little behind the eight ball with me even before I got to where the tea was being served. There were about a dozen tables with about 100 passengers and we were tucked away in one of the smaller areas but it still managed to feel like we were marooned in a sea of marble and gold.
Once all the passengers were seated and tucking into their cucumber sandwiches and cakes I sat down with the tour guides and we snagged a passing waiter to bring us something as well. It turned out that of the four guides, one was English, two were Filipino and the other was Chinese. There are an increasing number of Chinese tourists to Brunei although overall tourism is still very small in comparison to all of the other countries in the region. It has been a recent thing that someone has thought that there is probably a finite amount of oil to be pumped out of the ground and at some point a more sustainable industry needs to be created. With the amount of virgin rainforest Brunei has one of the obvious ideas is eco-tourism and the concept is still a fledgling one. At their own admission the tourist sites in the urban areas are few but there is great potential to see nature in the raw in an area of the world where other countries seem determined to denude themselves. If Brunei does it right, and the fact that they are protecting their natural resources as a matter of course anyway would indicate that they are, then they could become a little island of green in a bare space. The roads are good and the infrastructure seems to be there, having been built already on the back of the oil dollar, so look to Brunei as a tourism spot of the future. Or visit now so you can say “I was there when…”