Here’s my last post on my overseas holiday. If you haven’t read the others check them out here and here. So we rocked up at the hotel in Brunei with no luggage; the last time we saw that was when we left it with a confessed drug trafficker a week earlier. The hotel was extravagant and we got a good deal on it, pretty much getting the rooms for a tenth of the price. We checked in and the golf buggy took us to our rooms.
We washed our clothes in our bathtubs and eventually got our luggage back. The next day we saw some of the more touristy things with our new guide. We saw the national mosque, commissioned by the 28th Sultan of Brunei. As such, it had 28 domes, 28 fountains, 28 staircases and 28 of everything else. Later on in the day we saw the mosque commissioned by his father (pictured below). It only had 27 domes.
We also went to the propaganda museum and learned about all the royal family. In fairness, they look after their citizens: Brunei doesn’t have income taxes, education and health care are paid by the government, as is a substantial percentage of their mortgage (from memory, I think it’s half). The downside is that the country is a theocracy, complete with Sharia law. And the royal family epitomise conspicuous consumption. The sultan’s brother has about three U-parks worth of sports cars.
At the end of the day we had a tour of the water village. When I saw this sign I thought it was weird to advertise cars in a place that didn’t have roads but I found out later that the water village people are actually quite wealthy and many of them have houses on the land as well.
That night we had a banquet at one of the hotel’s restaurants for Danielle’s birthday. Th e next night we went to another resort at Kota Kinabalu for a few days. While we were in Sabah, we went to some markets, saw Mount Kinabalu and did some shopping.
This is Mount Kinabalu, which is claimed to be the highest mountain in Southeast Asia. I guess that depends on whether you define New Guinea as part of Southeast Asia or not. In any case, we tried to climb this mountain two years previously and got about three quarters of the way up. Even though we didn’t get to the top, we could still see the clouds from the other side.
One of the fruits at the markets was durian. You can only get this in Southeast Asia and it’s definitely an acquired taste. I didn’t acquire it on my first trip but I’m a little more partial to it now (I don’t dry retch at the smell anyhow). It actually smells so bad that you’re not allowed to take it on public transport in a lot of places.
We also saw a rafflesia. It’s the biggest flower in the world and apparently smells like rotting meat, or only slightly better than durian. This one didn’t smell at all so I guess we were lucky.
To get home we had to catch a flight to Singapore and wait another 23 hours for a connecting flight to Adelaide. Fortunately this was already in the itinerary so I took advantage of the time and went back to the Singapore zoo. This time around I took the time to follow the feeding trails and saw - what else - more monkeys. The one above is a saki monkey and the one below is a douc langur.
I also got a ton of photos of orangutans. They’re a personal favourite of mine because I’ve worked with the orangutans at Adelaide zoo. Our big male, Pusung, is actually from Singapore originally and here I am with his son, Satria.
Anywho, that’s what I got up to when I was overseas. If, like me, you’re a fan of monkeys and apes then you should go to Southeast Asia yourself.
