Touristing in Brunei

Finally I had a couple of days spare to be a tourist in Brunei (schools are closed on Fridays). First of all this involved a trip to the Royal Regalia Museum. This was actually very  impressive, so much gold! It was mostly filled with presents other leaders of countries had given to him on his coronation or jubilee, plus some pictures of him playing polo in the UK and a lot of British Army uniforms to show his time at Sandhurst. For future reference, what you could buy someone who has 257 bathrooms and 5 swimming pools in his palace:
- a big glass bowl with acorns and your own name on it (Elizabeth II)
- a massive stone sculpture of a walrus (Canada)
- a rather nice green ceramic bowl (New Zealand)
- a big wooden sculpture of a lion (Senegal)
- a silver model of Angkor Wat (Cambodia)
- some very nice laquer wood with inlaid mother of pearl (Vietnam)
- two HUGE elephant tusks (some Thai rice company)
- some model boats, either in silver if you're a very wealthy company, or rather naff if you're a small Bruneian town.
He is clearly very popular here. Some say that he is getting increasingly conservative (he has just introduced a rule that all businesses must be closed between 12 and 2pm on Fridays) as he gets a bit older..

Other than this, I also did a boat tour which goes around the water village, past the palace with the 257 bathrooms and into the jungle. This included two crocodiles, fortunately much smaller as I felt quite vulnerable sitting in a smaller boat closer to the water (!), a monitor lizard, lots of eagles, a stunning kingfisher (I think), lots of heron/bitterns/storks/egrets, a macaque monkey very close up (not normally a good thing) and some proboscis monkeys, which was great! They are pot bellied with really ugly noses, very gentle and very endearing. It was quite fun to go around the water village as well and see the power station, police station, petrol station and schools that all function there. It is the oldest and largest community on stilts on water, and there was a little museum about its trading significance plus British reactions on discovering it.

Anyway, I am now back in Malaysia in KL for a week or so. I very much enjoyed Brunei and saw quite a lot. Whilst I can see why it does not normally fall on the backpacking route, I would very much recommend to anyone who's nearby...