Meanwhile, in the jungles of Borneo…
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.
