MUARA, BRUNEI (2/26/2007)

From: Sherman Rootberg (biggiroot)
Date: Feb 26, 2007 11:57 AM
Subject: Monday, February 26, 2007

Monday, February 26, 2007

MUARA, BRUNEI

Don’t read this before attempting to eat or if you have a weak stomach.

One weird little place. It is on the northern end of the island of Borneo. It is a sultanate and one of the richest countries in the world. While all are not rich, there are an awful lot that are. Supposed to be the highest per capita incomes, on the average, of most any country. There are no taxes and fuel is cheap. I think it was about 38 cents a liter. If that was Brunei money it would be about 25 cents US or about 96 cents US a gallon. Prices for cars are about the same as the US. There were plenty of cars but no real traffic jams. Parking is a problem however. All the wealth comes from off shore oil and natural gas wells. It is said they will run out in about 10 to 20 years. If they are looking for tourism to earn them some dollars, they can forget about it. It ain’t happening.

They are about 5 degrees north of the equator. This place is jungle or in the new politically correct term, a rain forest. To have a rain forest you must have rain. Oh boy, do they have the rain. Like every five minutes it was a down pour. Beaches? Yeah, sure. They dump all their raw sewerage and garbage in the drink. It’s so bad, small boats have to keep stopping to dig the crap out of their outboard engines. Plastic and paper of every description not to mention floating birth protectors. The water color is the same color as a used toilet. Appetizing, huh? Makes you want to run right to the their, beaches. Even their tourist busses suck. They are old and in disrepair. Their seats are sized for small children. They are under powered and cannot make it up hills without down shifting and crawling along. Even some of the most backward places at least had good tourist transportation.

We went for a tour at about 12:30 this afternoon. There were some houses in poorly kept condition but a very large number of very large nice houses and many of them new. I guess they have to be big. Men are allowed four wives and twenty six children. Our guide said many had more children then twenty six and nothing happens.

First we went to what they call their national museum. Not to be confused with any of the major museums in the US. Quite often and anywhere in the world, including the US, any pile of collected junk, in a building or tent, is called a museum. We have seen worse, but this was really not worth a stop.

After driving for awhile we went to see their largest Mosque. Majesty’s mosque. All we kept hearing about was wonderful majesty. This mosque has twenty nine, twenty four karat, gold domes. As we have seen before, on mosques, there was also an obscene amount of fine marble and granite. They wanted us to lock up our belongings and take off our shoes to go inside. No cameras were allowed. Bobbi went inside. I would not remove my shoes and did not. She says it is ridiculously opulent. It rained twice while she was inside. It was very warm out but a pretty good breeze came up along with the rains. Every time it rained an army of workers came out, with floor squeegees, to remove the water from the very slippery marble and granite stairs and walk ways.

As we ride along, our guide explains things and constantly extols the many virtues of majesty. The wonderful things he does for everyone. All are totally free to do whatever they want as long as it’s okay with majesty. All citizens have many benefits like free school and medical. Only old family Indonesians, born in Brunei, can be citizens. Our guide is Chinese. Our driver is Indian. Neither can be citizens even if born there. There are still many rich Chinese with very large houses. Our guide says the Chinese always have red roofs on their houses. Most of the work in the country is done by outsiders that cannot be citizens. Our guide speaks like he has a mouth full of marbles as do many of the locals. We can understand maybe one word out of four. I think he says they get paid $50 or $60 a week or month to go to the upper grades of school.

Any religion is acceptable as long as it is Muslim. There are many rules to make foreigners feel very uncomfortable. Women cannot smile. Resident women must have their faces and bodies covered in ugly rags. To intimidate women on the tour, already wearing black clothing completely covering arms and legs, were made to further cover themselves with robes. If a women is raped she must marry the rapist. Both must become Muslim if not already so. You cannot point with your fingers. You can only point with your thumb while your hand is in a fist. You cannot signal come here, with your hand having the fingers pointed upwards, as we normally do. You can only signal come here, with your fingers pointed down and your hand held at head height. Try it in a mirror. Does it look really stupid? Now try it with your tongue out while smiling widely. Okay, you got the picture. Think that’s nuts? Then try this rule. All must be circumcised. No, not when you are born. When you are a teen I think. We could not get this straight from our marble mouth guide. We are not sure if it is a real circumcision for the men and a mutilation for the women as they do in some Arab countries or just a blood letting or something in between. That alone is enough to keep the population down. Most must leave before doing that stuff. Anything they can do to intimidate outsiders is practiced. At the same time the people themselves were always friendly. Even when I was waiting for Bobbi at the Mosque the workers would come up and talk. All speak some English and you can exchange some things.

Next we went to see a house in the water village. This was the original housing in Brunei before the oil find. It streches for about five miles. Everything is built on stilts above the Brunei River. There are public buildings and shops along with the houses, all connected by wooden walk ways.

We stopped at a waterfront water taxi stop. Our bus full was accommodated on three modern pontoon boats with outboard motors. They had very comfortable American style seating and were quite steady. Everyone had to put on life preservers that didn’t fit. I don’t know why. One drop of the water and your are instantly dead anyhow.

The river was a real toilet except you wouldn’t throw all your garbage in yours. Everyone was really afraid of getting water from this toilet splashed on them. Everywhere there were small boats with huge engines flying in all directions. These yoyos can only run them one way. Wide open. For all of those not familial with boats. All have perfect brakes. None of any kind. They only stop well when doing so up against something heavier then themselves. Our guide book calls them the flying coffins.

I am sure the house they brought us to is not too typical. It was spotless inside and out. There were air conditioners in the two bedrooms and the living room. The kitchen had a small refrigerator/freezer. The only cooking looked like a hot plate and plug in pans. There were two large washrooms with normal flush toilets. Yep. You guessed it. Flush and it just goes right down to the river. All of these Asian bathrooms have a hand sprayer much like the one we have on the kitchen sink. I think they must wash themselves instead of using paper. There is usually a floor drain in their bathrooms. Here it is a hole in the floor that lets you see the river below.

Our last stop was the coronation palace. Had we not been on a tour, we would have been transported here for a cocktail party for world cruisers only. As we were on a tour, those of us who are full world cruisers would be left here to join the others and return to the ship with them.

In this place was the same intimidation. This was not a mosque or holy place. Just more bull doo doo. You have to take off your shoes and leave your belongings for pilfering. No cameras. If you complained enough they had a small locker system to leave your small camera. I refused to remove my shoes as I saw most of the staff was wearing theirs. Oh, they are special shoes that are only worn inside. Yeah, right. So are mine. I’ll take them off as soon as I go back outside.

We had been given no warning about bare feet from the ship or I would have never taken this tour. For those who do not know, I wear special stockings for circulation problems. They are very slippery and are never supposed to be worn without shoes. It seams that even here, in push around land, the loud ones get their way. I was given special dispensation and allowed to wear my shoes. They, however, did not inform me that there were three floors to walk up and the elevator, if any, was not for infidels. I was not for doing long walk ups, so I stayed on the main floor while Bobbi went up with the group.

On the upper floors, among other things, was a display of gifts given majesty on his coronation. I believe said came, coincidentally, about the time Shell discovered oil in their ocean area. The gold gifts were unbelievable. At one time majesty was the richest man in the world. Over a hundred billion. Now he has squandered much of it away on a ridicules jillion room palace still under construction. He is supposed to be down to his last ten billion. I don’t know how many times they had to tell us about wonderful majesty and his family. Like you would believe too if they said it often enough. There were pictures of him. I don’t know if I have ever seen anything human uglier then that little sucker. Looked like something that crawled out that Brunei river.

By the time Bobbi was done touring, the world group from the ship had arrived. It was now about 5:00 PM. It seems they were now going to do the same tour that Bobbi had just done. So we went into the room where the no alcohol non cocktail, cocktail party was starting. There were some really good Hors D=Oeuvres but I couldn’t drink the 90% sugar drinks so we ate a few Hors D=Oeuvres and decided to go back to the ship. We just barely caught a bus that had just left. It stopped in the middle of a major down town street and held up traffic while we walked over to get on. Cute, but all these free people dared not even beep a horn.

It sure was interesting and as different from home as it gets. That is what I go to see. Some of the untouched countryside was as thick jungle as I have ever seen in person or pictured. I think they said the only animals were some proboscis monkeys. They are those monkeys with the long noses, if you have ever seen them. With all the very thick vegetation and mountainous land, I would be surprised if there wasn’t a lot more out there. But unless a lot changes, I’ll never be back. Their leadership is certainly not tourist friendly.