Brunei part two

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Brunei (Part Two)

While the men were climbing through the jungle, we women took a nice, leisurely tour of the cities. Our first stop was to view what is called water villages on stilts. Twenty eight small entities totaling almost 30,000 people are built on stilts over the water. They have schools and other facilities there, but most people commute by water taxi across the water to their cars and go to work on shore. This is not what you’d call shanty towns, either. The sizes of the houses vary and go from very small to rather. What many don’t have is a sewage connection. They have electricity, including satellite dishes for TV, however. This was quite a sight to see and of course, Bruce had the camera so I have no documentation at all.

We drove past the huge mosque surrounded by water on three sides and sporting a gold dome currently undergoing renovation. All the domes on the Sultan’s mosques and palaces are gold, not yellow paint, as the guide told us. He also said the people love the Sultan (don’t know if that is true or not, or if they live in fear of losing their livelihood) because they pay no taxes, have free education, low cost health care as the doctor visit costs only $1 each, and they are given either a house or land to build a house. Our guide is a Brit and he can never own land here and can not become a citizen. However, the Sultan’s palace is gigantic. It has 1,700 rooms! The many domes are gold, and he does have his offices in some of those rooms. We couldn’t get close to it and saw only some of the roof and domes. We did drive past his sister’s “home” which to a normal person is a palace as it takes up over an acre. His naughty brother is in deep doodoo and hasn’t been back to Brunei since the early 90’s. He got a bit greedy and the Brits are making him give back many of the hotels and homes he bought all over the world with Brunei money. There was a “yard sale” in London at his “home” and some of the things for sale were two Mercedes Benz fire trucks, 250 wrought iron lamp posts, and rooms and rooms full of lalique and other fine china and porcelain. The brothers haven’t spoken in years.

Shell Oil Company has the monopoly here. Everything is owned by the Sultan’s family or Shell. No other oil company can sell here. Some are allowed to drill, but must export everything themselves with no help from Brunei. We continued on to the seven star(?) Empire Hotel. It is not clear just who owns this beautiful hotel, but supposedly is does not make a profit. The presidential suite goes for $18,000 per night, we were told, but one can rent a room for as little as $200 per night. The occupancy rate is very low and the people are trying to encourage tourism in a big way since they know the oil won’t last forever. Hence they are buying hotels like the Dorchester in London and the Bel Aire in LA. Right now there is very little to do in Brunei except go to the jungle and tour the towns. It is possible to visit the mosques when there is no prayer service, but that’s about all.

We entered the beautiful marble lobby decorated, of course, in gold fixtures and glass chandeliers and went down one level to our tables for “Hi-Tea” complete with scones, strawberry jam, and real whipped cream. It wasn’t the fanciest tea service, but we were told the hotel employs 800 staff to wait on the guests. It was nice. Then we returned to the bus for our ride back to the ship after an interesting day in Brunei.

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