Kampong Ayer
Kampong Ayer is a city that never came ashore: forty villages of wooden houses on stilts in the Brunei river, thirty-six kilometres of boardwalk between them, schools and mosques and a fire station and a clinic all on posts above the water, and some ten thousand people who commute to the capital by water taxi in a minute for a dollar. It has been there six hundred years; Magellan's chronicler Pigafetta saw it in 1521 and called it the Venice of the East; and the sultans have offered its people houses on land for decades and most have said no, thank you. On the bank, Bandar Seri Begawan is the quietest capital in Asia, with a golden-domed mosque standing in its own lagoon beside a stone ceremonial barge, and, upriver, the largest residential palace on Earth, closed except for three days a year.
The traveller stands on the waterfront and raises a hand, and a boat comes; crosses to the village and walks the boardwalks — past the school letting out, the little mosque, the fire station with its boat, houses with satellite dishes and flowerpots and grandmothers on the step; visits the gallery for the story and its tower for the view; is invited, quite possibly, for tea; comes back for the mosque at dusk, when the dome goes gold and the lagoon holds it; and, on the way, takes a boat downriver into the mangroves, where the proboscis monkeys sit in the trees at the end of the afternoon looking exactly as surprised as you are.
The Guide's honesty: Brunei is small, rich, dry and calm — no alcohol is sold, the streets are empty by nine, and the country's laws are its own and strict: read them and respect them —; Kampong Ayer is a neighbourhood, not a museum, and the boardwalks are people's front steps — walk gently, ask before photographing, accept the tea; the water taxis are the transport and the price is one dollar, whatever the first quote; the palace opens only for the three days after Ramadan, when the sultan shakes hands; and Brunei's quiet is a feature — the mosque at dusk over the water is worth the trip on its own.