A little bit of geography lesson for those unfamiliar with Brunei: Brunei is made up of four districts – Brunei-Muara, Tutong, Belait and Temburong. The Belait district is where the oil towns are, and we visited both Kuala Belait (KB) and Seria towns, the same places that you would have to pass by in order to go down to Miri, the neighbouring Malaysian town.
So, on what seemed like a lovely sunny and bright morning, at 9 a.m. in the morning, the gang met at my place, since the highway was just after my place.
Jerry the manic driver
We set off in two cars at approximately 9.30 a.m. Hui, Sebastian, Marshal and I became Jerry’s passengers, while Maggie, Jerome and Juan rode in Tiong’s car. Journey to KB: approximately one and half hours.
On the way to KB, tailing Tiong’s car.
At the rate that both Jerry and Tiong were speeding along though…
The sleepy-eyed passengers.
Sebas.
In the more than fifteen years of my life growing up in Brunei, I have never actually visited KB or Seria towns. I’ve passed by them millions of time on the many trips down to Miri, so…
This is how big KB is:
KB town part 1.
KB town part 2.
Welcome to KB.
Yes, that’s really all there is.
Obligatory stroll around the town, just for the sake of it.
The dark clouds that had already descended over KB released their load, and that was the end of our trip as we know it. Plans to visit Sungai Liang and the waterfall, Labi, Anduki airfield, etc. etc. had to be all canceled.
We arrived in KB only to have roasted duck on rice for our breakfast/lunch, and left after a look around the town, and drove in the rain to Seria. We took the old road in order to pass by all the nodding donkeys.
Two nodding donkeys in the background.
Nodding donkey, a closer look.
This was either a construction or de-construction of a nodding donkey… can’t remember which it was. Sebastian was the unofficial guide in Jerry’s car, since he’s the most familiar with the area.
Another nodding donkey.
The skies made it felt like it was already late afternoon, but it was only about noontime.
Talk about raining on our parade.
We wanted to visit the OGDC (Oil and Gas Discovery Centre) at Seria actually, and hoped to stop by the Billionth Barrel Monument too (a monument erected in conjunction with the billionth oil barrel produced in Brunei), but the rain ruined all that.
The “Reverse Parking” sign was intriguing for me, because I’d never seen that sort of request before. Apparently, it’s so that people can evacuate quickly in case of emergencies, since KB is literally sitting on top of a vast underground network of oil and gas pipes. It’s a live time bomb!
OGDC was open, but because it was a Friday, they were closed from 12 to 2 p.m.
Just wonderful.
After hanging around for a bit, we decided to just leave and head back up. Note: It is hardly worth visiting anywhere in a Muslim country especially on a Friday.
We ended up driving back up to Tutong district where we stopped for awhile, and then ended up going back to Sengkurong where we had murtabak. Then back to my place, to recuperate and a bit of fun and teasing with the kitten.
It wasn’t all that bad, I suppose. But the rain made it really hard for us to be able to do anything. It felt like just a food road trip. Sort of. Think we might be redoing the trip next week; hopefully the weather will be nice and sunny then.
