Oily area

On our bus ride yesterday we passed by the Brunei oilfields and Miri, where we are currently staying, used to be an oil town. Oil was discovered on a hill overlooking the town in 1910, and production continued until 1972.
The original well was christened the 'Grand old lady', and as Daz pointed out, here are two grand old ladies in one place.
There is a large and modern museum next to the well that explains all about oil production and it's history locally, but unfortunately, it is closed on Mondays. So we will never know if the men really turned the pipe by hand, but it seems unlikely to me.
You may be thinking we are making a bit of a mess of things these last few days - turning up when things are closed, catching buses at the wrong time, falling over, etc, etc. Actually, you are probably right.
However, starting tomorrow we have three non stop action packed days, all booked and researched by Darren, so fingers crossed, things should be looking up.

BSB to Miri

Having to cheat a bit with the photos today as we spent the whole day travelling from BSB to Miri.
We had a good time in Brunei and watched Long Tailed Macaque monkeys playing in the trees opposite from our hotel bedroom window.
We also went to see the Mosque again after dark and it was beautifully lit up against the night sky.
Made a major error today as we read in the Lonely Planet that we needed to set off early and take at least three different buses and a ferry to complete our journey.
However, it turns out that this info is out of date and there are now two direct buses, one at 7.30am and the second at 1pm. We set off at 9am and caught two old and tatty buses to near the border of Brunei and Malaysia. We then found out that we had nearly a four hour wait for the next bus.
When it arrived it turned out to be the 1pm direct bus and we could have spent the morning in our hotel and then travelled in comfort.

$1.1 billion hotel, $1 bus fare

We decided to go for afternoon tea at the fanciest hotel in the whole of Brunei.
It is a 523 roomed extravaganza that was commissioned by Prince Jefri as lodging for guests of the royal family.  However, it was quickly turned into a hotel to try and recoup some of the incredible building cost.
It is about 20 kilometres from downtown BSB and is right on a beautiful piece of coastline. Inside it is filled with Italian marble, huge chandeliers and very attentive staff.
We caught a bus there that cost $1 each, and for the last half of the journey we were the only passengers. The driver knew our destination and turned into the long landscaped hotel grounds and drove us right up to the imposing entrance.
We thought this was very convenient and a bit surprising, but it was only when we left and asked the concierge where the bus stop was that we found out that the driver had gone off the route to take us there.
The concierge immediately took charge and he telephoned the bus company and asked that the next bus be redirected to pick us up at the main door. When he arrived it was the same guy who had dropped us off.
We couldn't believe we were getting into our own personal transport right among the golf buggy hotel shuttles, taxis and expensive guest cars.
Ps, the tea was great as well and very filling, well worth the $13 each.

Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque

We walked around the outside of this Mosque in Central BSB. It is a large Mosque with a golden dome which is surrounded by a lagoon, and 'floating' on the lagoon is a barge. However, it appears to be made of mosaic so is not a real boat.
Today is Friday and the Mosque is closed to non Muslims, so we have not been inside.
Continuing with the 'not going inside' theme we walked a few k to the Istana Nurul Iman, which is the royal palace. It has 1,788 rooms and is three times the size of Buckingham Palace.
Unfortunately, we went on one of the 362 days of the year when it is not open to the public. We did know this in advance, but we expected to get a good view of it from the main road. Big mistake - we could only see the gates, a couple of soldiers and a distant gold dome.
Undaunted, we walked on hoping that we would see it from another angle - still no.
We did find a completely deserted park that had a few beautifully painted tractors and diggers amongst the flower beds. No idea why.

'Venice of the East'

Last night we stayed on Labuan Island which is an interesting place - a duty free tax haven that is full of alcohol shops, chocolate shops and nightclubs. I haven't seen the inside of a nightclub since 1980's, so we didn't make full use of all the amenities.
This morning we caught a ferry for the hour long journey to Brunei. Brunei is a tiny oil rich country on the northern coast of Borneo where the sale of alcohol is banned.
After catching a bus to our hotel we had a wander around the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan, known as BSB.
There is a large water village in the centre of town where all of the residents live in houses on stilts. It is often referred to as 'Venice of the East', including on the map we picked up from our hotel.
We took a speedboat taxi for a look around that bore no resemblance to a gondola. Also there was nothing similar to St Marks Square, but I did get a good shot of some of the houses with the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque in the background.
I can't tell you about it yet though as we are going to try to visit it tomorrow.

Happy new year

We went along to the celebrations in Kota Kinabalu and I got my photo taken with some of the glamorous dancers.
The main square was packed and they had  entertainment and fireworks, so we had a lovely time.
We went to bed not long after midnight as we had to be up early to catch a ferry to a little island called Labuan.
We nipped into the Tourist Information Office to find out more about the local sights and it turned out that today is the start of a big advertising campaign.
The friendly lady gave us both big bags of freebies including lots of little cakes and some big crisp like things that said 'fish' on the packet. We were just about to open them as it was round about lunch time, when she came running out of the shop after us. She just wanted to make sure we knew that you had to deep fry them first before eating them.
Unfortunately our room does have a kettle, but not frying facilities, so we can only look at them for the moment.
There is a nice square in the centre of town, but even with Daz and a goodie bag in the picture, I am struggling to make it look interesting.