Sabah, Sarawak & Brunei Darussalam

19 Dec 06

It has been a tiring 2 days in Brunei Darussalam.

I landed Monday morning, having not slept more than 4 hours the night before, thus, I wasn't exactly in the best frame of mind. I was exhausted, socially weary and emotionally tired.

The ride to Kuala Belait, the little oil town up north, where 200,000 barrels of oil are pumped out of offshore platforms daily, took a good 1.5 hours by car. The little toyota corolla that transported me looked run down from overuse, and the sun rays were beating even more furiously down through the glass windscreen and windows of the car. It felt like I was in a greenhouse except I wasn't green at all, but I probably resembled a wilting vegetable...a beetroot. I must remember that black may be complimentary on a body in need of a good fitness program, but really didn't help in this tropical climate.

It's odd that Sabah, Sarawak, and now Brunei seemed hotter than Singapore. I had spent the whole of last week in East Malaysia, specifically Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, and fortuitously, was granted reprieve during the weekend when I spent it home in Singapore.

Kota Kinabalu was nice and had its own charm. The view from my hotel, the Le Meridien, reminded me of Australia, though when you peered through the large window panes up close, the untidy strew of colored umbrellas set up by the night hawkers every evening took away much of the clean, clear look that so typifies the beaches of the more developed nations. Nevertheless, seaview will always be a luxury to me to own, even for a brief stay.

Kuching was different. My first impression of the place was the spanking new Kuching International Airport that had just been completed. Ya, it was quite like Singapore. The sparkling new airport certainly belies the rest of the city. The taxi was disappointing. You'd think that with a brand new airport, the city officials will insist on providing brand new cabs to ferry visitors to their hotel. Ah, but the taxi was representative of most of Kuching. I guess the city has kept its rejuvenation confined to the airport.

I stayed in the Crown plaza, and found that the interior was like a charming old hotel. You'd not had known it from the facade, as the building looked quite new from outside. I found out it was a comparatively new hotel.

Across the street was its sister hotel chain, the Holiday Inn. That was older, and looked it, even its exterior. As it were, I was there at the time when the hotel was inviting its privileged guests to their monthly Priority Club cocktail session. Well, free food; I'm sure my company would not even realize how much money I actually save from accepting free eats, drinks, and not to mention my own MILO diet regime.

I actually did do some shopping in Kuching and bought a couple of gifts. Sarawak is very much like an independent country rather than a state in Malaysia. You'd notice it when you arrive at the airport and are told you'd need to go through immigration and the whole screening process. You'd even have to fill out the arrival and departure forms all over again, even though you'd done it going into Sabah.

Apparently Sarawak functions quite autonomously. Everywhere in the city of Kuching, you'd observe that the buildings had Chinese names, Chinese signboards, Chinese directional signs, and road names are also displayed in both Bahasa and Chinese. You'd forget you were in Malaysia and thought you were in Singapore some 30 years ago.

Ok, so much for Sarawak. En-route back to the airport last Friday, I had the opportunity to share my walk with a Christian convert, my host. I'm not sure if the people in Sarawak truly believed in Jesus or were merely Christians out of the lack of choice of a more comfortable religion to embrace.

Yes, the other stark difference in East Malaysia compared to West Malaysia, well, at least for Sabah, was the fact that Christianity was the religion of choice amongst many Chinese. In Kota Kinabalu, there were so many churches, I thought I was in Sydney.

I was told the native Sabahans were mainly Christians. Conversely, Kuching differed from Kota Kinabalu, in that it had more Taoist temples at almost every turn of the street corner. Still, many Chinese embraced Christianity as their preferred religion.

But that's as much as it goes; at least based on the few discussions I had with my hosts, 3 young gentlemen who accompanied throughout my time in Kuching. The Christians seemed like nominal Christians, with little understanding, little spiritual hunger in them for our Loving Savior. When I think of the believers in my church who queued up in expectancy every Sunday, hungry for His Touch, I cannot help but feel that there is an emptiness in the heart for those who have not known Him personally.

Anyway, that was Sabah and Sarawak.

Now in Brunei, I stayed in this 3-star type of hotel in Kuala Belait, the Swiss hotel, one of the best hotels in the little town. It was relatively new, and clean. Good enough for me. Poor internet facility, although they provide broadband cable connection. I'm not sure if it was my RS485 cable that was faulty or just their poor telecommunication service there.I tried to purchase a pre-paid mobile phone sim card to mitigate all the complaints from my boss of my exorbitant mobile phone bills but they didn't have any GSM sim cards available.

My hosts told me that this has been an ongoing phenomenon for over a year. No new lines! They did have a new telco service provider, b-mobile, but they only offered 3G cards. Apparently the network wasn't well geared up for 3G service anyway. I didn't get that as I had already bought a GSM sim card for both Malaysia and Indonesia, and I was using my new hand-me-down 3G phone set for my Singapore line.

I didn't want to bother with removing the card too often as it would tend to deteriorate the locking mechanism of the phone.

Now here I am, having finished a day's presentation at Brunei Shell to an audience of 16 highly influential Engineers and enjoyed a business lunch with 4 of the most important of the 16, after another 1.5 hour's car ride to Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei Darsussalam. I'm staying in the Sheraton Utama of the Sheraton Group. My room is quite splendid indeed. It's got a partitioned off sitting area and the high speed internet actually works very well indeed, though it does come with a rather hefty price; B$40 for 24 hours use.

I'm really tired now...my eyes are screaming to be allowed to rest. So I shall. Goodnight one and all who would be interested in my life enough to read my entries.