Bandar Se......what?
A few weeks ago I got a surprise email from an unknown political officer in the middle of a visa adjudication shift: Was I available for a few weeks in October to help our embassy in Brunei staff a high-level visit? Thanks to generous managers in Shanghai, YES!
This was the temporary assignment I'd been waiting for. Shanghai has sent a steady stream of visa officers to Beijing, Chengdu, Dhaka, Freetown, and Port-au-Prince for the last several months, and now it was finally my turn to join a group going on TDY. The trip was full of unknowns and last minute changes, hurry-up-and-wait times, and game-day excitement. But first, an introduction to Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei.
Fact: Brunei is one of two remaining sultanates in the world (Oman is the other, and the Omani ambassador did seem to be pretty popular around town). The capital, Bandar, is quite small and sleepy, and mosques are some of its most notable features.
Near the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin mosque on the edge of the Brunei River is a water village, with entire neighborhoods of homes, schools, police and fire departments build on stilts. Kampong Ayer, or the water village, actually pre-dates the city by hundreds of years - it was already 500 years old when Ferdinand Magellan stopped by in 1521.
The main thing to do in Bandar is take a water taxi around the villages and then go upriver to look for monkeys. There's really not much else to do, so I went twice - once on my own and once with a group of other TDYers from Seoul and Hanoi.
Normally monkeys are not my favorite, but seeing the proboscis monkeys in the mangrove trees was a very cool experience. Like so many other flora and fauna, proboscis monkeys are only found on the giant island of Borneo.
Unfortunately for the Dutch, the Malay name for these monkeys is "Dutch Monkey," supposedly named for local people's impressions of the large-nosed, large-bellied colonizers (!).
We also saw small white cranes, a giant lizard in a tree, and bats coming out at evening.
Bandar had fantastic sunsets. Every night, the sky over the river would turn orange and purple, bringing truth to the country's name of "The Abode of Peace."
Every evening in Bandar the call to prayer would go out across the city. Truly, we all need help turning our hearts heavenward.
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