Venice of the East
travels through the Sultanate of Brunei

Fresh off a Royal Brunei Airlines jet from some of Borneo’s less salubrious neighbourhoods, Brunei Darussalam (Abode of Peace) presented quite a culture shock when I first saw it. The soaring marble minarets and the golden domes of the Jame’Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque were the first sign of the legendary Bruneian wealth. The road from the airport swept alongside the wrought-iron fence that runs right around the grounds of what the locals call simply the New Mosque. Every few yards a fencepost is capped with a gold-plated dome and my taxi driver pointed out that this fence - merely encircling the real riches of the mosque - has been valued at US$8 million!
Bandar Seri Begawan (BSB) has few of the budget hangouts of Kuala Lumpur or Jakarta. Pusat Belia Youth Hostel is still the only cheap accommodation and the particularly unfriendly staff has often been known to turn away visitors whom they consider ‘undesirable’; after three months in the jungle, I was uncomfortably aware that I fitted very neatly into that category. In this dry, staunchly Muslim enclave backpackers often complain that there is very little to do once the lights have flickered on with the sunset prayer-call. If you think you’re going to find anything in Brunei of the after-hours vibrancy of Singapore, much less the all-night decadence of Bangkok, then you’re going to be disappointed.
Brunei has its own attractions that are only now becoming widely appreciated. The mosques and museums display some of the finest Islamic art in the world and the natural reserves offer the easiest ways to gain access to this incredible jungle island. The wonderful Jerudong amusement park has its own devotees who return every year. Although Disney Corporation might dispute the boast that it is ‘the world’s biggest amusement park’ they would be hard pressed to argue that it is not the best value (£6 covers all rides).
But it is the legendary Kampong Ayer (literally ‘Water Village’) that is the forgotten treasure among Brunei’s riches. Still drunk on the hospitality of the Dayaks of Kalimantan, my determination to spend a few days living there during my first visit to the sultanate was fired by reports that Asia’s oldest and largest stilt-village was, quite literally, on its last legs.
            The first westerners to visit Brunei were Magellan’s crew during their circumnavigation of the globe. His documenter, Vincenzo Pigafetta, is generally accepted as a reliable chronicler (despite misquoting the name ‘Brunei’ and thus giving the word ‘Borneo’ to the world). ‘The city is all built in saltwater, except the king’s house, and the houses of certain chief men,’ he wrote, ‘…it contains 25 thousand families. The houses are all of wood, placed on great piles to raise them high up.’
The only way to reach Kampong Ayer is on one of the taxi-boats that roar their powerful engines in competition to attract passengers. A ride in the bow of one of these launches, as they skip across the bay and sideslip around the narrow canals, provides an exhilarating introduction to what Pigafetta called ‘The Venice of the East.’
Kampong Ayer is still home to about 30,000 people and boasts its own markets, stores, petrol stations, schools, karaoke bars (non-alcoholic, naturally) and even a floating fire brigade. I wandered for hours along many of the estimated twenty miles of timber walkways, until it became clear that the only thing that Kampong Ayer lacks is tourist accommodation. I chatted with old men, fishing directly from their front porches, and as the sun began to set I watched the children come out onto the humpback bridges to fly kites as they do in the evening in all Borneo cities. In what is perhaps the world’s only floating pool-hall a young man offered to introduce me to the local headman.
The people of Kampong Ayer are immensely hospitable and, perhaps because so few travellers ever get here they are often ready to invite you in for refreshments. The best time of year for this is during Hari Raya Aidilfitri (the celebration that follows the month of Ramadhan). This is when local households traditionally open their homes to guests and, if you are respectfully dressed, you will certainly be invited in to share in delicious kueh mor biscuits or chocolate kek batik. Visitors are invariably stunned to see the opulence of the front rooms; several 3-piece suites and at least two perpetually blazing TVs is very common. Crystal-glass vases and hand-woven rugs are proudly displayed, and presiding over it all is the ever-present portrait of the sultan.
Within minutes I was drowning in a sumptuous couch while the headman’s dark-eyed daughters served a confusing combination of milky tea and prawn-crackers. We chatted in an equally confusing mix of Malay and English and the headman finally explained that, though he would like to find me some lodgings, it was in fact illegal for foreigners to stay in Kampong Ayer. He directed me back to the Youth Hostel.
But he had given me an idea and, before giving up on Kampong Ayer entirely, I decided to make a ‘confession’ at the police station. In other parts of the island I knew that it would be even easier to buy your way into jail than out and the Bruneian boys in blue also wanted to be helpful but: “It’s a very busy night. Can you come back tomorrow?”
It was strange that in this almost crime-free country all the cells were full…and for one night only!
Then I bumped into Ali and within moments he had offered me sleeping-room on the veranda outside his general store. Despite the fact that the store was stocked with very little in the way of goods, Ali’s family lived a typically pampered Kampong Ayer life. A large satellite dish cabled MTV to four noisy TVs and a spear-shaped motor-launch waited under the house, to shuttle Ali to his car on the mainland. It all seemed a long way from the upcountry kampongs where the mere ownership of a chainsaw is enough to win a man the status of a minor lord. I spent four nights with Ali and his family and, after the weeks in sweltering longhouses and mosquito-ridden jungle camps, the lullaby of lapping waves was a balm for my battered soul and leech-suckled body. At dawn I was awoken not by the yodel of fighting-cocks but by the cry of a fish-eagle going about his business before the tropical sun drove him to shade. On the mudflats at the edge of the village I watched huge monitor lizards hunting mudskippers while macaques chattered in the trees; a poignant reminder that even in modern BSB you are never far from the jungle.
Living conditions on the water village are considered by many mainlanders to be distinctly ‘sub-standard.’ The fires that occasionally sweep along these timber boardwalks can reduce a house to the waterline in minutes and over the years whole neighbourhoods have been burnt to charred stumps. Some residents have volunteered to move to modern houses on the mainland but, since most are adamant that they prefer ‘life on the waves,’ the government has recently responded by building a new ward out of fireproof concrete on the far side of the bay. Burned housing is rarely rebuilt and among some branches of the authorities Kampong Ayer is still not seen as a part of their future vision of a wealthy twenty-first century oil state.

Today the 29th Sultan, Paduka Seri Baginda Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzadin Waddaulah - that’s an abbreviation, his full title has thirty-one words - need prostrate himself before no man. His palace has 1,788 rooms, including a banqueting hall that seats four thousand and a throne room that is tiled with 22-carat gold. Until recently he was the richest man in the world and he remains the most popular dictator in Southeast Asia. But then his people also have relatively little to complain about. With an average tax-free income of US$19,000, free education and health care, generous pensions, interest-free loans for cars and houses and even subsidised pilgrimages to Mecca, the Bruneian man-in-the-street is a lot closer to the ideals of the ‘River of Diamonds’ than his fellow islanders.
But Brunei will not be an oil state forever. Experts have estimated that the ‘black gold’ will be exhausted within two decades and there are hopes that the sultanate will focus on tourism for the ‘2020 vision’ that will be needed to maintain the pampered lifestyle of its citizens. Beef, rice and forestry may offer valuable options. (The country owns a cattle ranch in Australia’s Northern Territory that is bigger than Brunei itself and, although fresh beef is flown in daily, rice is still imported from Thailand.)
Even in the world of oil all is not black and white; the offshore exploitation has had the effect of preserving much of the sultanate’s onshore treasures. Brunei still boasts rainforest covering more than half its territory and, as one of the easiest entry points to this great jungle island, it is becoming a favourite stop on the round-the-world backpacker route. There are almost twenty reserves in Brunei, packed with troops of macaques, silver-leaf monkeys, gibbons, giant monitor lizards, barking deer, mouse-deer and the iconographic proboscis monkey - known in Malay, for its stupendous hooter, as kera belanda, ‘the Dutch monkey.’
A mere 45-minute boat ride across the bay from the capital takes you to Temburong District, a ‘jungle playground’ equipped with canopy walkways, rafting facilities, a research centre and wildlife that is on the verge of extinction even in the darkest headwaters of other regions of the River of Diamonds. There are even Dayak longhouses here in varying degrees of antiquity; oil money has clearly not by-passed Brunei’s ethnic minorities and the newest ‘longhouse’ looks more like a particularly neat row of Notting Hill terraces!

The End