Brunei - February 25th

Overall, I think Brunei was a very interesting place.   Brunei is one of three countries situated on the island of Borneo, the other two being East Malaysia and Indonesia.  It has a population of 422,700 and the 29^th Sultan, His Majesty Paduka Seri Baginda Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah, Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan Negara Brenui Darussalam (try saying that name fast three times), was, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the richest man in the world in 1993.  

It’s a flat country with many, many forests and faces the South China Sea.  It has 365 days of sun; no typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes or floods.  It’s relatively cheap to live here but very expensive to die.  Cremations can cost about $8,000 and a cemetery plot runs about $30,000.  ($100 US equals $134 Brunei dollars.)  Average monthly income is about $1,000 with workers in the gas and oil business earning about $7,000 a month. 

Before we left home, we had booked an excursion to take a City Drive and visit the Royal Regalia Museum.  We had learned on the ship that the Sultan adopted sharia law recently and, so, we were advised to act and dress accordingly.  Behavior acceptable in other parts of the world, would not be acceptable here.  We were also advised that drug possession is punishable by death so we were very glad to have booked an excursion, not because either of us possesses or uses drugs, but can you imagine what would happen if someone walking down the street saw a policeman and dropped drugs into my purse and they were found on me!  On our tour, we saw nothing that gave us any alarm and, as Westerners, we were treated very nicely.

Twelve-year old Muslim boys and girls must be circumcised.  There is no birth control in Brunei so the average family has six children.  

I did, however, get the feeling that the buses were wiretapped to be sure that the guides said nothing about the Sultan or his regime.  On the contrary, I honestly believed that I was part of a political announcement for Bernie Sanders because all we heard about was FREE shuttles to and from work, FREE medical care, FREE prescriptions, FREE scholarships, FREE transportation to and from England if you were lucky enough to get a FREE scholarship, and FREE transportation for you and a companion to Singapore if you need surgery not available in Brunei.  People pay in 10% of their income for their retirement and people over 60 get $250 a month from the Sultan.  You can also get very reduced housing but can wait up to 16 years to get an apartment of 3 rooms and 2 toilets for about $120 per month.  (However, unlike in Bernie’s world which would tax people 95%, the people in Brunei are not taxed at all.)  

We were told repeatedly, by Sandra our guide, (and I swear these numbers will remain in my mind for the rest of my life), the Sultan’s palace, Istana Nurul Iman, the biggest residence in the world at over 2,000,000 sq. ft., has 1,788 rooms, 257 toilets, 5 swimming pools, and two banquet halls each accommodating 4,000 people.  He has a 300-horse stable and even though he is busy being the Minister of Defense and Finance and has lots of work to do, he plays polo every day at 4 p.m. 

But, again, the Sultan has acquired his wealth from Brunei’s oil and gas.  Gas is $.53 a liter and diesel is $.31.   The only gas stations in Brunei are Shell stations. 

On a bathroom break, we had the choice of a squatting toilet or a sitting toilet.  I opted for the squatting toilet because I’d never seen one before and although I heard murmurings from the front of the line to where I was standing towards the back of the line that “it’s a hole in the ground,” it was not a hole in the ground but actual urinal-type plumbing in the floor with a flushing mechanism.  The way the women were talking you’d think that we were in the middle of the jungle in Borneo and were squatting in a mud hole.  

Aside from visiting the outside gates of the Palace (which is open to the public one day a year – 300,000 people arrive -- men may shake the hand of the Sultan and women may shake the hand of the Queen), we also visited the Royal Regalia Museum which houses all sorts of royal regalia and the Jame’Asr Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah mosque built in 1994 to celebrate the Sultan’s 25^th Jubilee. It has 39 domes and no building can be taller in Brunei than the four tallest minarets on this mosque. There was also the water village, with a population of about 20,000, and is about 1,000 years old and called the “Venice of the East.”  I think the name exaggerates the situation a bit but, hey, I’m not in charge of naming.  

Michael’s Observations:  All in all, it was an informative and eye-opening excursion.  As someone once said, “it’s good to be King….or, in this case, Sultan.”