Brunei: Maura

Sunday, May 21, 2023, Muara, Brunei 

Brunei is a tiny country on the Northern coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. It has an extremely wealthy Sultan (oil and gas). In 2014, he implemented Sharia Law with one-day notice. Not being 100% up to speed on all the illegalities--many punishable by death--we decided one of the ship's tours would be prudent. We decided on a tour of the "Water Village" and the “Joyful Gardens.” 

Once on our tour bus, we found out it is forbidden to say negative things about the Sultan. According to our tour guide, there were listening devices throughout the city, and they could even listen in on bus conversations in certain places. Naturally she had only good things to say about the Sultan. She spoke excellent English and was the only woman we saw without a headscarf.

The first thing we noticed is there is not one scrap of garbage anywhere in Brunei. We felt pretty safe from crime but were also a little nervous about unthinkingly breaking any laws.

Downtown Maura looks a lot like downtown Olympia, Washington.

Our bus stopped at an attractive boardwalk along a large lake where we donned bright orange life jackets and boarded a boat tied up next to a beautiful pergola (an open-air dome structure). This was our transportation to the Water Village across the lake. The boat ride was nice with views of the many houses built on stilts. We disembarked to an extremely rickety, long walkway. There were broken boards here and there, and many that looked like they could break at any moment. No railings at all. It was downright dangerous, especially with differently abled seniors along. Hard to imagine that Oceania’s Destination Services knew about this. There were similar walkways connecting all the houses on stilts—a hug network of them. I was happy I still had my life jacket on in case of a mishap. The houses themselves were shabbily charming in contrast with the new construction elsewhere in the city. Most of them had been in families for generations, now mainly used as vacation homes, according to our guide.

Pergola and dock where we boarded our boat to the water village.

On our way to the water village

One of the better walkways. 

Approaching the water village.

The narrow walkway over the water. I was brave enough to take a photo while avoiding the holes.

We entered a large, modestly appointed home (most of us leaving our life jackets outside the door) and were served tea and local delicacies that were quite good. We were given a tour of the home, including the very basic but clean kitchen and bathroom facilities. Nobody used the bathroom not knowing where the sewage goes. Then, another hair-raising walk on a different rickety walkway to where the bus was waiting back on dry land. Periodically a speed boat would zoom by. The lake is also used for speedboat races.

Unusual but delicious food was served with a good tea. One guy still has his life jacket on!

One of our hostesses with her back to the camera. Our tour guide is standing—without a head scarf.

The humble kitchen in the water village home.

On to the Royal Regalia Museum, with artifacts and photos of the Sultan and his family. We were advised there were listening devices covering the museum and surrounding areas also. There were huge golden carrying vehicles for the Sultan among many other accoutrements. Some areas were marked “no pictures”, we didn’t understand why the discrepancy, but there were officers there to enforce it. 

One room of the Royal Regalia Museum

Shields and lances

During the coronation ceremony, 40 red and yellow checkered umbrellas are carried by 40 Awang (male commoners), attired in black.  Yellow represents His Majesty the Sultan, and red represents the people of Brunei.

Golden vehicle for the Sulton

Next on our agenda were two opulent mosques. At this point some of us were realizing there wasn’t time left to visit the Joyful Gardens, the part of the tour we most wanted to see. Our tour guide confirmed it—the gardens were not on their agenda. They have an interesting history and are supposed to be beautiful. They may have been closed due to lack of relevance to the Sultan.

Once back at the pier, we bought and mailed postcards at the port center gift shop. We were the last passengers to board the ship because we were busy taking selfies and joking with the Port center staff. These women were hilarious. I think the ship left 10 minutes late because of us (big oops).

Very funny women staffing the port shop.

Addendum:

At this point of the trip I quit posting because of time-consuming process of adding photos. Just one photo, taking a second to download at home, could take a half hour (or more) on the ship.  

Once we got home, I decided to finish posting our experiences. It thought it would be easy with our photos saved automatically to the cloud. However, I looked on the cloud for our photos from Brunei. Every other date (every other country) were there--no Brunei! I can only conclude they are somehow able to block photos from the cloud. Maybe some of you techies can explain it to me. Fortunately, our phones still have photos from Brunei, so I could add them.