Monday, March 12, 2012

My memorable trip to Brunei.

Brunei is a small country in south east Asia. It is Malaysia's neighbour. As I said it is a small country with a limited population. It is one of the monarchic countries in the world. Its Sultan or king is the richest person in the world. Brunei is a land of riches. I was there with family to visit my uncle and aunt who lived there. My awe for Brunei started right from the airport, the neat and tidy but a compact airport, with mostly women staff who were very organised and extremely pleasant.
As I came out of the airport my aunt and uncle picked me up and we drove off to their residence. The calm green non- polluted surrounding very close to nature was something new to me. I admired being in such tidy lush green surroundings.We reached their residence which was surrounded by greenery in the form of a lovely house garden with lot of flowers and fruits. We were there for ten days and I did the most adventurous tasks in my life. We went rafting in our own rafts to a forest -Temburong forest (very near to where we were staying) it was a thick dense forest and an exhilarating experience for me who has only seen forests in movies. At the centre of the forest was a quiet lake. We went for a swim in the lake and then climbed a bridge and reached a tower climbed to its top and admired the beauty of the forest from the top view. We also met the tribal people there, who instead of living in the forest were living in well built houses and spoke English. Their hospitality was indeed very memorable. Then we visited a waterfalls bathed in it and were off to trek in the Tasek mountains- With all our mountaineering gear we looked so professional! We climbed the rocky terrain successfully and reached home contented and happy. The next day the headlines in the paper was - The bridge in Temburong forest broke and fell when tourists were walking through it. Yes the bridge to reach the tower in forest , the one we walked through the previous day had broken injuring tourists. We thanked our stars for saving our lives the previous day. This had indeed been the most adventurous and memorable trip of my life ever

2 comments:

GVK said...

Interesting. The very mention of Brunei evokes interest. If only because of our impression about people's affluence. I had occasion to spend a couple of weeks with a correspondent from Brunei's newspaper. We were both visiting Germany at the govt. invite. I believe the newspaper my friend worked for was owned by his country's foreign minister, a prince. He spoke of no unemployment, laid-back life-style. Made one envious. It was in 1994, I believe.

Arvind Passey said...

Well, yes it is incredible the way man-made structures tend to decay and fall at the most inopportune time... though you were lucky to escape that catastrophe! Good for you.

Arvind Passey
www.passey.info