On our flight back to London we had a three hour stop-over in
Brunei. As with most stop-overs, we were planning to sit in the lounge in a
haze of tiredness, staring blankly into space, hoping that time would somehow
disappear into a vacuum as we waited for our connecting flight.
It turns out Brunei had a very special treat in store for us to help
pass the time.
We were very pleasantly surprised to find that Royal Air Brunei were
running a stop-over shuttle bus tour through the main city. While we were
initially a tad apprehensive about the whole thing on account of the dodgy
looking signage, having no idea what the conversion rate to the Brunei Dollar
was and therefore fearing that we were about to get ripped off, the general
sense of complete disorganization on behalf of the people organizing the tour,
and the obvious risk that if anything went wrong we were going to be stranded
somewhere in the middle of Asia (come on…as if anyone actually knows where
Brunei is!). Despite all this, we thought we would go for it. We felt it would
be quite against everything that we stand for to pass up the opportunity of
chalking off another country.
It turned out to be a great move. Aside from making the time pass a
whole lot quicker, we both got to experience our first taste of Asia. We got to see a water village, some big and impressive looking mosques, and finish the
tour by strolling through a night market.
While it really was the most fleeting of visits, it was great to get
an insight into a new culture and way of life, which was again quite unique to
anywhere we had visited before.
Despite our slight trepidation, everything went smoothly (we were
assured that there is no traffic in Brunei in which to get stuck). We returned
to the airport safe, sound, and most importantly on time.
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