Bandar Seri Begawan Water Village

About this pack

A 5-day premium trip to Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, taking in Kampong Ayer stilt village, Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque, Ulu Temburong canopy walk and Royal Regalia Museum.

Inside the Bandar Seri Begawan Water Village trip

Bandar Seri Begawan Water Village opens at Kampong Ayer, the stilt settlement built above the Brunei River near the heart of the capital and long nicknamed the "Venice of the East." Covering about 10 square kilometres and home to more than 10,000 people as of 2016, the settlement is believed to date back at least to the reign of Sultan Muhammad Shah between 1363 and 1402, when it served as the primary settlement of the Bruneian Empire and a major trading port; the Italian explorer Antonio Pigafetta, visiting as part of Magellan's expedition in 1521, described it as a place "entirely built in salt water" holding twenty-five thousand households, its wooden houses raised on tall pillars. Today's Kampong Ayer keeps that same wooden, stilt-built tradition alive through an extensive network of walkways, pedestrian bridges and motorised water taxis known as perahu tambang, connecting neighbourhoods that still include schools and mosques built directly over the river.

From the water village the route leads to the Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque, one of Brunei's two state mosques and, on its completion in 1958 for a reported US$5 million, one of the largest and most striking mosques in the Far East. Commissioned by its namesake, Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien III, the 28th Sultan of Brunei, and designed with substantial input from the Italian artist and architect Rudolfo Nolli, the mosque draws on Mughal architectural influences and is topped by a gold dome that dominates the skyline of Bandar Seri Begawan; its interior combines rugs from Saudi Arabia with walls of Italian marble. Set within a man-made lagoon, the mosque is joined by a concrete replica of a sixteenth-century royal barge, the Mahligai, modelled on the ceremonial longboats once used by Brunei's Sultan Bolkiah for royal celebrations and processions.

The trip then travels upriver to Ulu Temburong National Park, Brunei's first national park, protected since 1991 and covering about 550 square kilometres — some 40 percent of Temburong District — within the Batu Apoi Forest Reserve. Reachable only by longboat from Bandar Seri Begawan via the town of Bangar, the park's lowland rainforest is dominated by towering Dipterocarp trees and is home to the Eastern grey gibbon, Wagler's pit viper, the earless monitor lizard and more than four hundred species of butterfly, including the black-and-emerald Rajah Brooke's birdwing. A network of boardwalks and bridges stretching some 7 kilometres leads visitors through the reserve to a canopy walkway built on steel towers that rises 50 metres above the forest floor, giving views out across a forest BirdLife International has recognised as an Important Bird Area for species including the Storm's stork and the rhinoceros hornbill.

The route closes at the Royal Regalia Museum in the heart of Bandar Seri Begawan, a building originally constructed between 1969 and 1971 as the Churchill Memorial Building — commissioned by Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien III, a noted admirer of the British wartime prime minister, even though Churchill himself never visited Brunei. Renovated and expanded in 1992 to combine its original crescent-shaped structure with new galleries reflecting the Melayu Islam Beraja philosophy of Malay Islamic monarchy, the museum today displays royal regalia and ceremonial objects from the 1968 coronation of the current Sultan, including handwoven carpets and thirteen sets of royal decorations arrayed beneath a golden dome inspired by the sultanate's traditional royal parasols — a fitting close to a route that has already carried the traveller from centuries-old stilt houses through a landmark mosque and an untouched stretch of Bornean rainforest.

• Kampong Ayer — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Ulu Temburong National Park — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Royal Regalia Museum — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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