Back in Blighty!

Hello avid readers!

Laura and I landed at Heathrow at 0620 this morning, having taken the overnight from BSB via Dubai (30 minute stop over).  Brunei was short of internet terminals, hence no blog posts from there.  The good news is we can put all our photos up now. 

Brunei was an illuminating experience.  It would be hard to claim that the country does anything other than pull oil and gas out of the ground, selling it on to the Japanese, Koreans and Europeans.  If there is a tourist industry, we arrived at pretty much the worst time of the year - during a festival called Hari Raya, which marks the end of Ramadan - so everything was closed.   With one exception.  The Sultan's main palace.

We did a quick river tour on the evening we arrived (20th), where we saw the water village and proboscis monkeys.  I managed to slip on the steps down to the river and spent most of the journey bleeding out!

Next morning we were up relatively early to go to the estana (palace) in BSB for the three open days.  The Bruneians say there is nothing to do in Brunei other than eat an shop - and this was borne out on our estana visit, where we were fed then made to sit in an enormous room waiting to meet the sultan (in my case) and the third queen (in Laura's case).  Unfortunately they both went for lunch and we ran out of time - although we did see them drive in as we left, in a flash new Porsche.

After the estana we picked up a hire car and drove the full length of the country, not using the new motorway(!).  It took 90 minutes. 

We booked into the Officer's Mess in Seria, the young mess orderly totally confused as to who we were and what we were doing - but we managed to get a VIP flat out of him!  The mess is as I remember from the '86 (?) Christmas concert.  Nothing else familiar was visible for the whole trip - the young officers in the mess didn't know of any houses fitting the description of the one I remember.

There has been a huge amount of building in Seria - primarily housing for resettled indigenous people.  It's a bit "Lego Land" unfortunately, but the Sultan pays for it all (via the Shell joint venture I suspect!) so I suppose the locals are relatively happy. 

The mess service was excellent - there was five full time staff looking after 10 live in officers and Laura and I, so there were no excuses for anything less!

We went into the jungle for a walk up to the waterfalls - it was very hot, and we didn't see anyone else until we got out - more Europeans.

On Wednesday afternoon we went down to the border with Sarawak, then back to the garrison swimming pool which was very nice.  When we got back to the mess Laura took us both for a run along the beach.

On Thursday we got up at 0640, settled the mess bill (£39, full board, two people, two nights!!), then drove back to the other end of the country to Muara for a morning's scuba diving with a major operator there.  Again, end to end of the country (this time on the motorway) took 90 minutes. 

The scuba was great fun once we got out to the coral - we got ourselves to seven metres deep by the end of the dive, and saw lots of colourful fish, as well as a large red jellyfish at the end of the dive.  The best description of the seabed (in my opinion) was "like a chinaman's deli" - sea cucumbers were absolutely everywhere.

After the dive we headed to the seven star Empire Hotel and Country Club - built by the Sultan's brother because he was a bit worried there was far too much money in the country's bank account.  It was unbelievably swish.  I had a birthday massage at the club, and Laura wandered the seven on site restaurants.  I also got given two birthday cakes - one from Laura and one from the hotel management.  We had to bring them back to the UK there was so much cake!

Friday morning we swam in one of the many pools at the hotel, then headed to the airport via Jerudong Park (now desolate - another "too much money in the bank account" project - a theme park this time), the old British Consulate, and the main museum (20% about oil and gas, the rest about the country's fauna and cultural history).

The flight back was very easy, and this morning we are both quite fresh.  Laura says we have to go to the gym now to work off cake, but i'll post the photos quickly.