Brunei

We spent Easter Sunday in Brunei, an Islamic country where Easter is just another Sunday to the vast majority of the population. We had an early docking time, so Liz and I brought food down from the Terrace for the boys so they could sleep a little later. We were out and on the bus before 8:00.

Our excursion for the day was a mangrove cruise and visit to a water village. The mangrove cruise would ideally give us a chance to spot proboscis monkeys, a unique monkey endemic to Borneo. As it turned out, we did get glimpses of these monkeys. The boats, however, were not well-suited to viewing. Rather than being open-sided they had sides with windows in them, so you were trying to look through small opening to see anything. That didn’t work well, so this part of the excursion was disappointing. The river and shoreline were beautiful, it was just hard to see much.

We were then taken to a house in the water village where we had tea and snacks. It was fascinating to see how the locals live. Brunei is an extraordinarily wealthy country, but these folks had a basic house. Overall the country had an unusual vibe. Broad streets, clean sidewalks, big buildings, but nobody around. There was zero traffic and almost nobody on the sidewalks. It just could not have been more different from the cities we’ve been in recently. Partly that’s simply due to a smaller population: Brunei has a total population under half a million. It just seems a little overbuilt for the number of people.

We had a 4:00 departure so it was back to the ship for some cooling off (it was very hot and humid) and relaxing. We enjoyed dinner on the terrace with a nice lightning show as we sailed off.Læs mere