Salaams to the Sultan

Hi everyone,

Since the last post, Nadia and I have been off to greet the Sultan in Brunei, and are now back in Kuala Lumpur. Well, we didn't actually get to greet the Sultan (our invite was clearly lost in the mail), but we managed to see the roof of his palace: The Sultan of Brunei apparently has the World's 2nd largest palace, and one of the world's largest private collections of luxury cars. As if it weren't large enough for the Royal family, they are in the midst of building another palace to accomodate his son. The current palace is off limits to visitors except when it opens to the public for 3 days at the end of Ramadan, but there are very few pictures of it. So, we hired a boat to take us to stilt villages built on the river in Brunei, and also to get us as close as possible to the palace to take some photos. From all angles, the best we could do was the rooftop...sorry folks.

The stilt village, better known as "Kampung Ayer", houses roughly 30,000 of Brunei's citizens, with houses, mosques, schools, police and fire departments, etc. all built on stilts that sit perhaps 5-7 feet above the water. In some cases, the "stilts" are no more than a few sticks in the water - we were amazed that the houses hadn't collapsed. Perhaps the Sultan could buy them some new sticks(?) Here are some pictures and videos to give you an idea. During the rainy season, apparently the mosque depicted below, is half in, and half out of, the water:

A trip to Brunei wouldn't be complete without trips to their opulent mosques. We went to two of the largest, most opulent. The first of which was the Jame 'Asr Sultan Bolkiah Mosque (named after the current Sultan), also known as the "Golden Mosque":

And of course, we had to check out the Omar Ali Saifuddien III mosque, named after the current Sultan's father, complete with replica Chinese junk ship out front:

For those that don't know, Brunei is a tiny country, with a population of about 350,000 people. Only 100,000 of those live in the capital of Bandar Seri Begawan. By day 3 of our visit to Brunei, we felt like we had seen all of the sights, and decided to take it a little easier and check out a movie. At nighttime, Brunei comes to an absolute standstill. It's an alcohol-free country, but that doesn't mean that everyone has to run for shelter when the sun goes down, does it? Nadia and I went out for a walk one night and found that we had all of downtown to ourselves. Brunei has a long way to go before it's going to become a tourist mecca!

Nadia and I agreed that the most excitement we had in Brunei occurred in the airport terminal when a man who was supposed to be on our flight back to KL had to be wrestled to the ground after fighting with airport personnel. It took five security officers to take him down, and later carry him out of the terminal. People were recording the whole incident, so look for it on YouTube coming soon! As if that weren't enough, after being delayed for another hour, we left the island of Borneo in the midst of a lightning storm...Now we're no pilots, but should they be doing that? Needless to say, the two of us we're pretty happy to reach dry land back in Kuala Lumpur.

Since then, Nadia and I have been taking it relatively easy here in KL, doing walking tours of various areas of the city, and taking in their impressive aquarium, which included a moving walkway that went through the middle of a giant fish tank full of sharks, rays, etc. Seemingly, we were the only nerds in the aquarium who didn't have kids, but we didn't care. We especially enjoyed "feeding time" when the divers fed the fish. Check out the pics and videos:

Tomorrow morning, we're off to the island of Penang, famous for its Chinese and European colonial influences. More importantly, it's home to the Penang series of dishes, which anyone who's ever been to Salad King will know what I'm talking about. We'll likely write again when we're in rather remote Rebak Island, a small island owned entirely by Taj Resorts, situated 4 km off the coast of Langkawi island (i.e. an island off of an island). Until then...

Mike and Nadia