I flew Royal Brunei Airlines to New Zealand for Christmas. Managed to get out of Heathrow just fine, though there was plenty of evidence of the chaos it had been subject to for the preceding few days. We went via a short refuelling stop in Dubai, and then I had a 12-hour lay-over in Brunei itself.
If you didn’t know (and my grasp of geography didn’t include this), Brunei is on the north coast of Borneo – the third largest island in the world.
I thought I’d leave the airport and go and do a bit of an explore. I turned down the organised tour, and the $25 taxi that was on offer – and opted instead for a $1 bus into town, and a $2 chicken and rice meal from a takeaway place the locals seemed to like.
Following my nose got me (by $1 boat ride) to a village on stilts, and then the offer of a ride up the river to look at the palace, the mosque, and maybe some proboscis monkeys. Naturally, I agreed and after some brief haggling, off we went… much further than I anticipated.
After about an hour of travelling up the river with my driver Yusup, we slowed down to scour the jungle branches in search of the monkeys. And we went pretty deep into the jungle. Almost worryingly deep into the jungle – or at least that’s how it seemed to my city-accustomed brain.
It did briefly cross my mind that perhaps I’d been kidnapped, and that around the next corner there would be men with guns waiting – but Yusup was so interested in finding me the monkeys, I figured out pretty quickly that this was fairly unlikely. We also encountered some other tourists on boats doing much the same thing, so I guess this is just what happens. Who knew?
Unfortunately, the proboscis monkeys were all in hiding that day, but I did see crocodiles, massive snakes, and monitor lizards. So that’s a win. I mean – I was in the jungles of Borneo, for goodness sake.
And, of course, you know what song was stuck in my head the whole way… and I don’t even like Guns ‘n’ Roses.
I have a similar duration stopover in Brunei on the way back. I’m determined to find those proboscis monkeys this time.
And I’m going to be quicker on the draw with the video camera too. There are actually crocodiles in the above video, but only moments after submerging, so you can’t really see them.
Check the Flickr page for more adventuresome photographs. And have a merry Christmas.
