Most of what you’ll find online when you look at what to do in Brunei talks about how boring Brunei is. It feels a bit rude, really. Brunei is tiny, and it’s surrounded by some of the best travel destinations in the whole world, so naturally it suffers by comparison. To me, it feels most akin to Liechtenstein – a small country that’s pretty unusual compared to its larger and more well-known neighbors, but has similar landscapes and less tourism offerings, and often gets overlooked.
Brunei is on the island of Borneo, which is mostly controlled by Malaysia and Indonesia. I haven’t been to either of those countries before but I think most of the tourism is in Malaysian Borneo, where people go orangutan spotting and trekking.
In Brunei, the main things to do are to explore the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan, as well as river cruises where you can spot the proboscis monkey. What makes Brunei unusual, you ask? Brunei is very wealthy from oil and gas. It’s led by a Sultan. Wikipedia tells me that the Sultan’s powers include emergency powers ever since the Brunei Revolt in 1962, which means that they are technically under martial law and have been since the early 1960s. And it’s extremely Muslim, to the point where they practice sharia law. That was implemented in 2013, so it isn’t just a holdover from the olden days. They have some pretty unusual punishments currently on the books. All of this to say – there isn’t a lot to do in Brunei, but I was still quite interested in seeing it because it is unique.
Bandar Seri Begawan is not a big city. From our hotel to the waterfront, it was only about a 15 min walk, so we saw the majority of the downtown pretty quickly.
The waterfront has an area to walk around in, and it’s possible to get water taxis over to the floating village. We had coordinated with our hotel to do a tour at sunset instead, which ended up being a great choice. More on this later.
From there, we headed over to the Omar ‘Ali Saifuddien Mosque. If you’ve ever seen any pictures of Brunei before, chances are it’s of this mosque. It’s their national symbol. This one was an unusual visit because they had a very specific robe they had us all wear. I’ve been to plenty of mosques before, with all kinds of rules – almost all have made me cover my hair, some have asked me to put on a skirt, others have asked me to put on an abaya. But none have handed me a robe that makes it look like I’m graduating high school / going to Hogwarts / joining the Illuminati, so that was kind of fun. Huge point for Brunei for also making the man in our group wear the exact same robe.
We explored the grounds and walked over to another nice viewpoint of the mosque.
From there, we headed to the Royal Regalia Museum! We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside. This was extremely up my alley, though. It was all about the history of the Sultan, as well as all the presents that he had been given from various other countries. At one point we ended up in an area where they had jigsaw puzzles to complete. Since we were enjoying the air conditioning and had nowhere else we wanted to go before our sunset tour, we ended up sitting down and putting together puzzles.
After a quick stop at the hotel, it was time for our tour! We started with a boat ride, which we boarded next to this giant cool bridge.
From there, we headed far down the river so we could find a spot with proboscis monkeys. These are also known as the long nosed monkey, and they certainly do have some spectacular noses. It was exciting to spot them and we were able to observe them in large groups as they maneuvered around the trees.
As the sun started to set, we headed back to the floating village! We had a nice boat ride to the home of our guide, where he and his wife prepared some snacks for us and told us about Brunei.
I’ve been to a lot of very untouristy places, but it was pretty unusual to have our guide show us the wall with every tour group he’s ever had in his home and be able to remember which countries they were from and details about their trips. He was so nice and he was excited to have visitors! It was very cool to get to see one of the homes in the floating village, and imagine what it would be like to live there.
We also wanted to go check out the night market. This was pretty far from the main city center, so we took a cab there and back. It was fairly tame by Asian night market standards, but the food was good and it was nice to see another part of the city.
So with that, what’s the verdict on Brunei?
It’s not a big place. There’s enough to keep you entertained for one or two days, but it is more of a day trip like San Marino or Monaco or Liechtenstein vs. somewhere that you would want to spend a lot of time. There’s so much to do and see in Southeast Asia that it’s hard to recommend it over some of the heavy-hitters, but if you want to see a different side of the region, a quick trip would do. Regardless, do a little research on it because it is certainly worth learning about.