(Remember to
look up the pictures on facebook.)
Well, it’s time for me to make another blog entry, I
guess. The last one was from
mid-March. Since then, we’ve been
busy with mostly “normal” stuff.
Then again, we’ve done some non-normal stuff too….
For H’s 16th birthday, she wanted to swim with
the pink dolphins. I posted
pictures on FB. She really enjoyed
it. She had a much better
experience than I did when I did it in 2009. Back then the dolphins were in a lagoon that was basically
the ocean fenced off. You couldn’t
see the dolphins underwater at all.
Also, they didn’t let us get pulled along by holding on to the dorsal
fin. This time, they were in a big
swimming pool (like what you see at dolphin shows), and H got a dorsal fin
ride. I’m so jealous! As if that weren’t enough, they also
brought out a sea lion that she got to pet. Too cool.
We
had a bout of indecisiveness at the dolphin tank. After she swam, it was one hour ‘till the next dolphin show. Her ticket included a free meal at the
upstairs restaurant (overlooking the show). Neither of us was hungry, but we decided to go up and see if
we could trade in her free meal coupon for 2 drinks instead. Amazingly, we could. (It’s unusual that a Singaporean would
let us ‘break’ the rules like that!)
We decided not to stay up there and see the show from the air
conditioned restaurant. (We
could’ve, but it would cost a min. of $10 for me to stay.) We weren’t hungry, and decided to go
on. Well, until we got to the
bottom of the stairs. At that point,
H. decided that maybe she’d like to see the show after all. Well, I was too embarrassed to go back
up and trade in my free drink for a $10 snack of some kind, so we ended up
finding a seat in the regular (HOT) stands. Oh well.
We
stopped by the candy store on the way home and bought Papaw’s favorite candy to
bring to him this summer. :-)
We had our traditional Egg Cracking on the 31st
of March. H. won. Must’ve been the birthday magic or
something. She had the winner AND
the runner-up. The winner was green. The runner-up was patterned after The
One Ring (Hobbit), it even had (correct) elvish script on it saying “one to
rule them all”. How could that one
not win?!? Ah well, I guess the
green ring represented Frodo (who did wear green and did destroy the ring,
sorta.)
A week and a half later, our friend (can’t put his name
here) came to stay with us for a few days while he applied for a visa to
Vietnam. He has been going to
Vietnam for the last 20 years or so to teach the Bible and encourage the
Christians there. He knew the
Vietnamese authorities were getting wise to the fact that he was using a
different embassy each time he wanted to go, but he was hoping to stay ahead of
them. Well, it didn’t work
out. After he got the visa, they literally
chased him down and took it back.
They’d gotten a call from Vietnam saying he couldn’t have it after
all. So then he had to come
up with an alternate plan….. He
ended up staying at our house for a total of 3 weeks. I felt sorry for him.
It isn’t exactly quiet around here, and I don’t exactly have time to
devote to showing someone around Singapore. :-P But I think
we managed to do O.k.
I
also went to Brunei with my friend, Emiko, while our friend was here. It wasn’t originally planned that way,
but we already had our tickets when his visa was cancelled. Also, AS had a boy scout campout that
weekend, so things got a little crazy!!
Anyway,
Erin and I were talking about things we’d regret that we hadn’t done while we
were in Singapore. I said I didn’t
get to go to Brunei. He said he
wanted to go to Myanmar. (He may
yet do that.) He told me, “You
should go to Brunei. Go on a
Thursday and come back on Saturday”.
So that’s what we did.
I
wanted to go there because I have this thing for little countries. I’ve been in Monaco and the Vatican,
and of course lived in Singapore, so I wanted to “collect a passport stamp”
from Brunei while I was in the neighborhood. Emiko
booked our plane tickets, and I found a hotel online. It wasn’t easy.
There were only 3 hotels with rooms available for our dates. I thought that was a bit odd, but then
again, it IS a small country -
maybe there just aren’t that many hotels.
Hmmmm. One of the hotels
was the “Empire Country Club” it
was $500 a night. We chose the
Jubilee Hotel instead. It was, uh,
how to say….. a budget hotel. Yes. That’s about right. Sometime I’ll show you the
pictures. We found out
why so many hotels were booked – ASEAN was in town. All the delegates had to stay somewhere! I’m betting the Presidents stayed at
the Empire. If you do a search on
Expedia.com now, you’ll see that there are actually 5 hotels in Bandar Seri
Begawan (the capital). If I ever
go back, I’m staying at the Radisson instead. Actually, it wasn’t bad at all. The AC worked and we were fine even if the bathroom was not
exactly what I wanted. There was a
restaurant and mini-mart downstairs and that was very handy! They also had free pickup and return
service to the airport and a free 45 min. tour of the city.
We checked in and then went out looking around on foot. The city is very small and quiet –
especially compared to Singapore!
We walked around and saw the outside of the Oman Ali Saifuddin
Mosque. (Hereafter referred to as
“The Oman” mosque).
Because some ASEAN dignitaries were prowling around, we couldn’t go
inside the Oman. So we went across
the street to a mall and bought some cheap touristy junk. (Hey. We only had 2 days!!!)
We walked down by the river and saw the water village across on the
other side. We ate at an Italian
place. The pizza was o.k., but
Emiko ordered some brushetta and it had some weird meat-like substance on it. She thinks it was octopus. I’m not so sure. But I didn’t really like it. We walked past several museums/attractions
on the way back to the hotel. One
of our goals was to go to a spa while on this girlfriend’s trip. We walked by the Radisson, but their
spa was closed for renovation.
(Poor ASEAN delegates!)
When we got back, we asked to see
the hotel’s tour menu. We picked
out one we liked and asked them to book it for us. It included a ride up river to see the proboscis monkeys, a
tour of the water village, and a tour of the city by night to see the
lights. We especially wanted to
see the Sultan’s palace at night.
You can’t go in, but you can stop at the gate and take pictures. Anyway, the hotel said the tour
guide would pick us up at 3 the next day.
We also looked into the free 45 min. tour offered by the hotel and
discovered that it covered what we’d already seen, plus a small part of the
tour we’d rather do.
So to recap: We chose the hotel because of the free
airport pickup (which we used), the free airport return (which we didn’t use –
more on that later) the free wi-fi
(which wasn’t working when we checked in, but it was the server’s fault and it
came back online later that night), and the free 45 min. tour (which we turned
down). Yeah. Next time – Radisson.
The next day was Friday. The entire country shuts down at noon
by order of the Sultan. This is
because it is a very very muslim country (by order of the Sultan – who is
Sultan and also Prime Minister). Being
in Brunei felt a lot like what I THINK it would feel like to be in the Middle
East – well with a lot more humidity. Most of the signs were in English and Arabic. The women (other than the ethnic
Chinese) all had their heads covered, etc. On the plus side:
there is NO alcohol for sale there. None. Foreign
tourists are allowed to carry in some small amount (a bottle of wine? A 6 pack of beer? – I can’t
remember). Emiko bought some hand
sanitizer and even THAT didn’t have alcohol in it! I’d heard that muslims don’t buy perfume with alcohol in it,
but wow – hand sanitizer??? Do
hospitals there use rubbing alcohol?
I don’t know.
So we ate breakfast in the hotel
restaurant, which was good. Then
we walked down to the Arts and Handicrafts center. I was hoping for more things in my price range, but I ended
up buying Erin and AS each a tie.
AS is almost tall enough to wear a regular size tie!! (He has seriously grown this Spring!!)
The showroom was fun to look around in.
At one point I almost had a heart attack because I turned around and
Emiko had picked up an open copy of the Koran off of a stand. I got the bug eyes and motioned for her
to put it down. I don’t think the
ladies working there saw it. Us heathens aren’t supposed to touch it. In doing that fact double-check I found
this site which you may or may not find amusing and/or interesting:
After the handicraft museum, we
walked up to the Royal Regalia Museum.
That was a treat. We had to
leave our shoes at the door and check our cameras/purses. I really wish they’d sold guidebooks
with photos of all the treasures.
This was where they stored the gifts from other countries to the
Sultan. We had fun looking for
stuff from Singapore, Mexico, and the US (found all 3). At the end, we were allowed to take
pictures of the big chariot thing that they carried the Sultan in for his
coronation.
Then it was time for us to go back
to the hotel and grab some snacks from the mini-mart before it closed.
So, if you go to Brunei – don’t
plan to be there on a Friday.
We only had 2 days and it was frustrating that EVERYTHING was closed at
lunchtime for prayer service. The
only thing we know of that was open was the hotel front desk. No restaurants, no mini marts, nothing. On the other hand, we walked a lot that
morning, so we were happy to take a rest.
The Brunei citizens are REQUIRED to
go to prayer services. (I’m not
sure what happens if you don’t go.)
If you have a gathering of 30 or more people in your home, you can stay
home and have your own prayer service. Otherwise, you have to go to
the mosque on Fridays. Our guide would
not ever under any circumstance say anything even slightly negative about the
Sultan. (Freedom of Speech?!?!) But listening ‘between the lines’ we
gathered that many people in Brunei were outward muslims, but inwardly they
either followed the traditional beliefs (animism mostly I think), or didn’t
care much for religion at all. He
said something about being “new” muslims or ‘still working on being good
muslims’ or something like that.
Being muslim is compulsory, and I’m betting not everyone there is happy
with that. There are a few
Christians there, but the 2 churches are closely monitored. One Christian lady was given 48 hours
to leave the country after she prayed for a muslim family.
At
three o’clock we went downstairs and met our guide. His name was Danos. He was nice, but also had ways of dealing with foreigners
who have money.
Because a big storm was rolling in, he decided to take us on up the
river to see the Mangrove areas first.
We got in a little narrow boat with an outboard motor. Emiko was terrified. It probably didn’t help that I was
teasing her about seeing crocodiles.
:-D And that the sky was
rapidly turning BLACK. I don’t
think she’d ever done anything like that before. So the guide, boatman, and I all teased her about being a
city girl. Anyway, we went up the
river a ways and pulled into the Mangrove trees to see the proboscis
monkeys. That was nice. While we were there we could hear the
call to prayer going out from some mosque out there in the suburbs.
None of us really wanted to be on the
river during the storm, so we headed back towards town. The boatman also took us through the
water village “streets” (canals).
It really is more the size of a small city and you can get around either
by boat, or by raised boardwalk.
The boardwalk is only about 4 feet wide and has zero edge or railing or
side in most places. But that
didn’t stop kids from playing there – riding bikes, flying kites, roller
blading, etc. We got
off the boat and went in a visitor’s center. That was neat.
They had the history of the water village and some cool artifacts. That village has been there in one form
or another for several hundred years.
As we were leaving the visitor’s center, our guide went over and grabbed
an armload of freebies from the front desk. We got posters, maps, and a picture dvd of Brunei. Cool. Then the guide took us on a short
walking tour of the water village.
The visitor’s center is clearly in a newer section. Danos said that was because there’d been
a fire and the Sultan rebuilt the burnt section better than before. We were allowed to go in a couple of
the houses, but chose not to - it
just felt like we’d be intruding.
Danos was showing us his uncle’s house and mentioning that we could stay
there next time on the cheap. Hint
hint…. The houses were very nice
in the new section! Very cool
floors. All have a.c. and most have satellite t.v. We stopped and Danos
bought us some drinks in plastic bags.
(Very common practice in Asia to drink from a small plastic bag with a
straw.) Emiko and I were both
hesitant to drink it because we were afraid of the water. We finally asked Danos and he told us
that the Sultan insists that all the water in Brunei be filtered and purified. So we tried it. It was good and nothing bad
happened. We walked on over to a
house in the older section. This
family makes some extra money by allowing tourists to come in and see a typical
house and family. The mom and
grandma were in the kitchen making snacks (a large group was coming soon), the
men were all watching sports on t.v.
Danos said their instructions are to not do anything out of the
ordinary, but to let the tourists see them as they are. We sat down in the formal dining
area/guest hall and ate some snacks.
The snacks were good and I ate my share. I think we also had tea to drink. The room we were in could hold probably 50 or 60 people
easily. The main purpose was for
family reunions. Danos said most
homes followed that floor plan.
We’re not sure about that house, but most of the houses there had no
pipes for sewage – it just falls into the river below. Yep. The water is filtered and purified. Yea. And it was getting to be low tide. Hmmmm. But
honestly, we didn’t smell anything, so maybe that’s true only for certain
sections of town and not the one we were in.
After the snack, we rode back across the river to the main
town. Danos started driving us to
supper, which was confusing. We
said, “We thought the tour didn’t include supper”. After much discussion we finally all got it straight. The hotel had booked us for the wrong
tour. They’d put us for one WITH
supper but WITHOUT the night tour of the lights of the city. great. Danos milked it for all it was worth. “Oh, I’m sorry, but if you want to add
the night tour it will cost more.”
“I’ll have to call my family and see if it’s o.k. for me to work late,
etc.” All of which is
reasonable, but also played to the emotions of 2 foreign tai-tai’s. (eyes rolling) So, we agreed to pay the extra
money. We arrived at the
restaurant that we didn’t want to eat at – not because it looked bad or
anything (it didn’t!) but because we were miffed about the mix-up. Neither of us was hungry right after
that snack. (Can blame that on the
storm and having to go up river first instead of to the water village
first.) But our dinner was
included in the tour that we’d paid for by mistake. So we decided to just get another snack or something. Emiko ordered the fish and chips. I ordered the “beef nachos”. Yes. I totally realize now that ordering “beef nachos” in Brunei
was stupid. Beyond stupid. Idiotic. Nevertheless, I was thinking, “This looks like a place that
caters exclusively to tourists.
Maybe they even have a foreign chef. You never know.”
Stupid. The waitress comes
back and says, “Sorry. We’re out
of the beef. Is tuna o.k.?” I said, “No. Tuna is definitely not o.k. I’ll just have them without any meat at all.” Idiotic! Red flags going up!!! Ah well.
You can see the photo on my FB page. It’s basically Nacho Cheese flavored Doritos (they had
those!) stuck pointy-end down into cubed bread which had tuna sauce poured over
it. Yep. You read that right – TUNA sauce. Ewww. So the actual “cheese” in these nachos was
the neon orange powder on the Doritos.
Also, not sure where the chef learned that bread is a part of
nachos. I can actually forgive the
tuna sauce because many people do consume tuna products, (Not THIS people, but hey, I admit I’m
weird in many ways.) and many nachos do have meat on them. Emiko’s fish and chips weren’t
bad. Danos took my nachos home for
his kids (he has 5 sons). So yes,
we didn’t want to go there, we didn’t want to pay for food that we weren’t
hungry for, but we did and we did and then Danos’ kids ate mine because the
food I didn’t want turned out to be tuna sauce bread with Doritos!!
After
“supper” we drove through the city to look at the lights. It really is nice at night. We went and saw the other mosque, the
“Jame’Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque”
hereafter referred to as “The Jame” Emiko and I went back and forth
between calling it “The Jamie” and “The Haime”. The actual pronunciation is somewhere in between. “Jah may” or something like that I
think. We only saw the outside
because it was closed, but it was pretty.
Then we drove over to The Mall.
Not the mall as in one of several, but The Mall as in really the only
one. It was clearly the happening
place to be. Also, there was a
small traffic back up because some minor royalty was coming to The Mall that
night for something. Danos shouted
something to the guy directing traffic and then turned to us and said, “My
brother-in-law.” Well, it is a
small country! We didn’t stay at
The Mall long. It was like many
other malls to us and we didn’t especially feel like shopping at that
level. Danos then took us to
another little local type store that also had touristy junk. That was more our speed and we bought a
few little things. We found out the stores aren’t allowed to give out plastic
bags on Fridays. That Sultan is an
environmentally conscious dude.
After
the shopping we went over to the palace and saw the front gates. Cool. The driveway is Impressive! He actually opens the palace once a year and anyone can come
inside and meet him. Danos said
they do it every year because the Sultan hands out $5 to every kid. He said the line is a couple of hours
long, but it’s worth it for his family for the $25. He also said, some people stand in line more than once….
Anyway, after the palace gates, we were just ready to
sleep. So on the way back to the
hotel we talked about what we’d do the next day. Our original plan had been to take a taxi out to the Empire
Hotel and Country Club and get a massage, then take a taxi back and go inside
the Jame and then back to the hotel to get our stuff and go to the
airport. Remember that the hotel
has free airport service. But in
talking to the front desk and Danos (yeah, they were probably in league), they
all told us that a taxi out to the Empire would cost us a lot. We finally settled on a price to hire Danos
again the next day to do all of our driving for us. We had to haggle a bit and finally got everything worked
out.
All
in all, I felt like we paid Danos a fair price for everything that he did for
us. But: A) The first tour mix up was annoying. B) A lot of his nice-ness felt
disingenuous and more ‘let me play on the emotions of these rich foreign
ladies’ and see what they’ll pay. C) We handed money over to him 3 or 4 times plus
tip. So we did NOTHING to help the
next batch of foreign ladies that come to Brunei! Sorry ‘bout that.
I
did get a bit of revenge on him, though.
He was making conversation and Emiko told him that I spoke several
languages. I think he took that to
mean that I spoke Malay. He
instantly got very serious and quiet and said, “If uh… anybody or I said
anything that offended you, I’m truly sorry.” I instantly remembered when we’d passed another tour group
coming into the water village house and he’d said something to the other guide in
Malay and they both laughed. I’m
sure it was at our expense. I let him think that I’d
understood. Bwah ha ha. Maybe he’ll stop making jokes with the
other guides around future customers.
The
next morning we again had breakfast at the hotel. Then we walked back over to
the Oman mosque. They told us it
was closed again, but Emiko gave the guy the big sad eyes and said, “Oh please,
this is our last chance to see it.
We tried yesterday and couldn’t.”
So the guy let us in. We
had to put on some seriously ugly long black robes and take off our shoes. It was nice inside. (I’m not a big fan of mosques. I’m just over Islam in general. Yeah, in case you didn’t know me, I’m
not very politically correct.) The
architecture however, was worth looking at.
We walked back to the hotel and
Danos picked us up shortly after and we were off to the Empire Country Club and
Hotel. It was a pretty long drive
for such a small place. We got
there and the place is sprawling.
We drove to the main building first before learning that the spa was in
a different part of the resort.
I’m glad we hadn’t taken a taxi, because we would’ve needed another taxi
to get to the other building.
Seriously, it would’ve been an hour’s walk. We arrived at the spa just in time. The massage was excellent, but the
ambiance was even better! We
could’ve had use of all the facilities, but we hadn’t brought our swimming
clothes. We were very relaxed and
stress-free by the end of our visit!
Ahhhhh!!!!
The
spa building also had the 19th hole for the golf course. We went down there for lunch. I ordered a salad, and Emiko had a
sandwich. My salad had fish sauce
of some kind on it. (kid you
not!) Emiko didn’t like her
sandwich much, so we traded. J Maybe you’re starting to catch on that
food wasn’t really a highlight of this trip.
Danos
showed us around the hotel. He is
an expert in climbing and rigging.
So he showed us some of the things that he’d done for the hotel as far
as rigging goes. I actually passed
his contact info. on to the Boy Scouts in Singapore, because they’d have a
blast coming to Brunei and doing some trekking and climbing.
The
hotel was very fancy. It was a
project by the Sultan’s younger brother – who later got in trouble with his big
brother for embezzlement.
I
bet he really regrets being caught.
Especially now that his monthly allowance has been cut to $300,000. Poor guy. I guess that’s why he couldn’t finish the movie
theater he’d started near our hotel.
It’s just a concrete shell of a building.
Anyway…..
After
the Empire, we drove around a bit in the neighborhood. Danos wanted to take us to a place to
feed the monkeys (bad idea!! – Monkeys are evil!!), but when we got to that
park, there was some sort of corporate event going on. (must. refrain. from. making. monkey. suit. jokes. here. Ooooh almost made it. ) So we went by an old amusement
park. I’m not sure if this was
another of little brother’s projects, or just something that the Sultan got
tired of. But it looked like it
used to be a fun place to go.
Danos said the locals got in for $1. If I’m not mistaken, this is also where little brother paid
$17 to have Michael Jackson perform.
(Danos rigged the lights for that.)
We
drove past one of the Sultan’s sister’s houses. She actually had 2 mansions facing each other across the
street. One of them had a separate house (with a.c. and servants) for
her cats. Apparently even in
Brunei there are crazy cat ladies.
Our
next stop was at the Royal Stables.
The security here was minimal, so we just drove up and started walking
down the rows petting the horses.
I enjoyed that. Most of the
horses were imported from Argentina and had a thoroughbred/Arab cross look
about them, heavy on the tb. There was also a beautiful Friesian-type who was
afraid of my camera. I don’t know
how many horses were there, but it was at least hundreds. The groom said the ones we were looking
at were for military and police parades.
I bet that Friesian belonged to someone special.
After
seeing how much I enjoyed the horses, Danos tried to get us in to see the Royal
Polo club. No dice. Another corporate event. Apparently, Friday after prayer break
is a good time for a company to slack off. But I bought a hat there anyway because it said Royal Brunei
Polo Club and it had horses on it.
I’ll wear it to cover my helmet-hair post trail ride. We did get to see their elephant from a distance. Not sure why the polo club has an elephant.....
We
came back into town and stopped at the Jame mosque. This one is much bigger than the Oman. We again had to put on the black robes
and take our shoes off. Inside was
a little different. You don’t just
walk into the worship area. The
‘foyer’ is huge, with a giant marble staircase going up to the 2 big prayer
rooms (one for men and one for women).
Lots of marble in the place.
Very fancy. I frankly
wasn’t as impressed with the prayer rooms themselves as Danos thought we’d be. They didn’t look that different from
the mosque in Singapore. But what
do I know? I’m sure they cost a
fortune to build! Anyway, like I
said, I’m not a big fan of mosques anyway. But the marble in the Jame was impressive.
From
there it was time to go to the airport.
We ended up snacking in the airport and making it on time and without
trouble back to Singapore.
Well, honestly, I started this blog entry in Singapore in
May. It is now June and I’m back in
the U.S.
Sometime in the next week or 2 I’ll try to get everything
caught up to date. But this entry
is long enough. So there.
