This morning I’m off to Brunei and apparently the best way to get there from KK is to go by ferry. The ferry leaves at 8am and gets to Labuan, an island belonging to Sabah, at 11.30am and then another leaves there at 1.30pm and arrives in Brunei at 2.30pm. Sounds good to me and an interesting way to cross the borders, more fun than going by bus I think.
Getting up this morning was a real trial, everyone else in the room was still sleeping and I would have loved to have been doing the same, I lay there for a couple of mins and thought how easy it would be to just delay my trip by another day but no I thought better of it and dragged myself out of bed.
The ferry terminal is only a 10 min walk away but because my legs are killing me and I’m carrying all my gear I thought I’d get a taxi...........that was until they tried to charge me a fortune for it and out of principle I walked! It’s only 7.30am and its hot already! I’m carrying around 16kilos of gear and I’ve just climbed a mountain, what was I thinking?! I made it to the ferry, amazingly, sweating more than I care to recall and bought my ticket. I got on the ferry 5 mins before it departed and as I did so one of the ferry guys took my bag and safely stowed it away. Which was great until about 5 min into the journey it appeared we were actually travelling in a deep freeze box! I had turned up in shorts and a vest top and everything else was in my big bag, the big bag that was now inaccessible. I had 3 and a half hours to go and potentially I could freeze to death on this journey.
Fortunately, of course, I didn’t but I’m not sure what good it did my cold. :-(
Labuan was our first port of call and as we had a couple of hours there I did the dutiful niece thing and headed straight off to the post office! I managed to get a couple of things Mick wanted but not everything, tomorrow is another new issue of stamps so hopefully at my next destination after Brunei I’ll be able to pick up some stamps for you Mick. I’d like to say I’m becoming an expert with this stamp stuff but I think it’s still all beyond me! :-)
Back on the boat to Brunei and this time I’m prepared, and this time of course it wasn’t anywhere near as cold!
Arriving in Brunei I had no money and no where to stay! Nothing new there then. I actually thought the ferry came into the main town and I could go to an ATM but it comes into Muara, which is around 25km by bus away. Fortunately there was a money change at the terminal. My experience of having no money and ferry terminals usually indicates there isn’t one so I was lucky this time.
Then as for accommodation, I had a phone number of the only budget place in the whole country and they weren’t answering the phone! I had clocked another tourist on the boat who seemed to know what there were doing and as we got off at Muara I started chatting to them. It turned out Blanka was heading for the same place as me and she knew it well having only been there 10 days beforehand. She was on her way home from working in Oz and NZ and got a cheap flight to Brunei but then went straight to Sabah for a few days and was now heading back again as she was flying home the next day.
The bus into Bandar town took around 45 mins and as we got off of the bus there was a guy at the bus station that Blanka seemed to know. As we walked away she told me all about him, his name is Danny and he seems to be a freelance tour guide of some kind and seems to know everything there is to know about getting into and out of Brunei and what you can do while you’re here. He looks like he’s out on safari on holiday, with a Bermuda style shirt, shorts and a backpack with a Proboscis monkey soft toy attached, he looks more like a tourist than a local guy and so really stands out. When I chatted to him a bit later he told me all about how he’s on the internet just type in ‘Danny Brunei Bus Station’, so I did and he is, try it.
The only budget place in town appears to be a local Youth Hostel and Sport Centre called Pusat Belia, we were greeted with a very abrupt ‘you wanna stay?’, well with all our worldly belongings on our backs it was almost tempting to say ‘no just thought we would come by and say hi’, but thought the humour would be lost here! The hostel is actually very nice and very clean, our dorm has just 4 beds and there’s just the two of us in it. You can’t be too late in the day though getting here cause apparently they close up the office at around 4.30pm then the only option is a one of the big hotels. Lucky I took the morning ferry huh?
Pusat Belia has a swimming pool as well where this afternoon there appears to be the local swim club practising. For BD$1 we can use the pool and I kinda thought a nice dip in the water might make my legs feel better. I guess it could have done if I could have actually used my legs in the water!! There were so sore still that I couldn’t swim a stroke! Oh well there’s this whole country to explore yet.
Everyone says there’s nothing really in Brunei to see and nothing to keep you there more than a day or so. There’s a beach apparently a bus journey away but it’s full of rubbish and I don’t sunbathe, there’s also an amusement park just outside of town but apparently it’s like a ghost town and you tend to be the only ones there, I didn’t fancy it. So that leaves the main town.
There are some great water villages here which the guide book says don’t miss so after a very quick dip and a shower we both headed out to hire a boat and driver. Our driver found us rather than we found him and after a little bit of bartering he took us off on a tour of the water villages.
Some of these places looked very nice indeed, of course some didn’t but that’s like any neighbourhood. We passed by several schools so there must be a lot of kids around. Education is free here so I guess they make the most of it. All the people who we saw during our boat ride were very friendly and calling out hello to us and waving which was nice. Brunei is such a lesser travelled country than Malaysia so you don’t really know what to expect but it seemed really nice to me.
After an hour cruising up and down the river and enjoying the sunset over the palace we came back to town and made our way to the satay market form some vegetarian noodles. I don’t think Blanka had really been eating at the markets, she’s vegetarian and I think a little cautious of knowing for sure there was no meat in it. I assured her that what we had ordered had no meat and we tucked in.
Brunei seems to be very quiet indeed, there doesn’t seem to be many people around anywhere at all and certainly not many tourists.
Lets see what tomorrow holds.
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