First of, I am super duper upset, because I had started to write a hugely long post on my impressions of Brunei and its capital, and for some odd reason the entire draft got deleted when I went to post it. Grrrrrrr!!!
Anyhow, I am now seating on a simple plastic chair at the night market of Kota Kinabalu, it is 8:30pm, I ordered a grilled half a kilogram of grouper with rice and an Indian iced tea for about $5, after some negotiations. Expansive for a diner, I know, but it is a fish city after all so I have to get with the local delicacies.
This town sells amazing fresh fish all over. It even has shrimps the size of my forearm!!!!! (My forearms are not that big, but still, quite huge for shrimps/langoustines). Papa, Tu serais comme un fou devant tous ces beaux poissons!!!!!!
So here goes my second take at writing my impressions of the Sultanate of Brunei...
My short 48 hour visit to Brunei was just amazing! I was far from expecting it would be that way.
Well, right after crossing the last border road/custom check, u managed to see a rhinoceros hornbill bird fly near the bus!!!!!!
Aside from that, Brunei is quite a nation of contrasts. Its suburbs are identical to Miami's. Seriously, identical. Though its houses might actually be a bit bigger than Miami's. Same architecture, same neighbourhood styles, same gardens...
Brunei only discovered oil under its land in the late 1920's, hence making it a fairly new developed nation.
The Brunei dollar being pegged to the Singapore dollar is almost on par with the US dollar which is 3 times more valuable than it's neighbour's (Malaysia) Ringit.
BSB, the capital is a concrete enhancement of the strong contrast that shows Brunei. Mainly a contrast between the opulence of the modernisation of the new recently developed mainland city, and the more ancient, traditional stilt city.
BSB has (and this has been the highlight of my trip so far) the oldest, more than 1,000 years old, and biggest, more than 20,000 people "floating" village in the world! Kampong Ayer.
The sultan back in the days decided to build this village on stilts at this location as it was the center of the sea trade between east and west' and until a few decades ago the entire government and even the sultan were still living in that Kampong. It is only recently that due to and not necessarily thanks to economical development and its desire to compare to the "first" world nations that the city center and government got relocated to the mainland.
There is not necessarily a social status/wealth difference between people living in the village and the ones living in the stilt houses. At least it is what I was told. Besides, these stilt houses, though they might seem ancient, falling apart and deperished from the outside, are actually huge inside, and just as fully equipped as any modern house on the mainland: AC, fridge, freezer, microwave, oven, washing machine, large flat screen TV, ...
The kampong has several mosques, a fire department, a police station, several schools and koranic schools, super markets, restaurants, and I even managed to find the one unofficial gym which is located in Haji Hindra's house. He is 36 yrs old and already has 6 kids (oldest is 17 and youngest is 2!)
It is amazing to watch the buzzing continuous defile of the numerous high speed wooden longboats that taxi from jetty to jetty all throughout the village and with the mainland all, day and night. Like an unofficial boat show.
I got up at 5:30am just to be able to spend as much time on the. Village as possible before taking the ferry boat to Hangar in the afternoon.
I actually ended up walking around the village from 6:30am to 1pm non stop and only managed to see about 75% of it! But what an unbelievable piece of architectural and urban planning art. The favorite part of my trip so far.
The night I arrived in BSB, y bus, at night and in the rain, once I managed to find a place to crash, the cheapest in the city ($10 a night forms bed in a dorms! expensive!) I actually decided to walk around the city to scout my itinerary for the next day...so off I went for a good two hour walk in the rain. The main mosque was just splendid by night...and on the other side of the fence, on my way back, I bumped into this 25 yr old local kid who was illegally fishing above the fence of the pond surrounding the mosque. Hen had just caught a 50 cm catfish before I arrived.
He told me he was in the army, in the free fall squad. So cool! I was so proud when he told me that he had 15 solo jumps under his belt, and I told him that I had 12 jumps myself. I told him that in other countries it is actually a hobby and that you don't have to be in the army to jump free fall. He was quite surprised.
In any case, I won't say more about BSB for now, I need to leave some story telling material for when I see you in person. :0)
One last thing before closing this post; the fellow who was seating behind me in the bus from Mark to BSB (late 40's Hindu man, farther of two, and who is one of the main managers of renovation of Brunei's main airport and only sees his family once a month) share some political historical facts with me about Malaysia current situation.
Indeed, some years back, the ruling party of Malaysia was losing majority seats in the parliament to the rising opposition party in Sabah. So in order to regain power in the parliament they decided to start offering residency permits to Philipinos to move to Sabah, which would then secure them additional votes within the Sabah community. However, it seems that they didn't reach then initially desired results and the opposition party kept on strengthening its stronghold in Sabah. So in a last attempt to regain power (though it has not been proven yet) the ruling party would have provided arms and weapons to the Philipinos living in Sabah and the once recently arrived for them to rebel against the opposition party and take over Sabah. That way, the ruling party can then fight them back and out of Sabah to prove to the Sabah residents its worth and regain their votes.
Hmmm...isn't it what the US kind of try to do in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, and many other countries?...and how did that work out, eh!?
