Brunei

Time for prayer

Houses on stilts

My ferry between Malaysia and Brunei

Very photogenic

The mosque in the background overlooking the water village

The largest mosque in the country

A beautiful Borneo Sunset

I need to stop crossing borders, my passport is getting full. I had only just arrived in Malaysia and I have left already - working my away along the northern coast of Borneo - Sabah, Malaysia to Brunei to Sarawak, Malaysia - passport stamps for arriving and passport stamps for leaving. Brunei is not quite the gold encrusted pavements that I had anticipated but there is clearly wealth here. It is a very safe and quiet place - not much in terms of night life and the streets are almost deserted come 8pm. A very pleasant place to stroll the streets and museums and to discard your shoes and don a robe to visit the local mosques - the insides are relatively plain but the outsides can be rather grand - it is also quite hypnotic to see the sunset over the mosque and at the same time listen to the call to prayer. Although wealth is apparent there is also poverty with the mosque over looking the water villages, although a lot of the houses on stilts do have all the mod cons of modern day society. It is not until you travel the coast of Brunei back into Malaysia that the source of the wealth becomes apparent - oil rigs out to sea and nodding donkeys bordering the highways.