I don't like Brunei

Our nice shiny new hostel put on a superb breakfast of pears, toast with lovely raspberry jam and butter, Greek yoghurt with passion fruit, cheese slices (yes, a little odd) and a delicious latte (Matt had tea). It was a little rushed as we needed to catch a bus to the airport from round the corner as soon as we could (as usual I was a bit stressy and Matt was annoyingly calm). Luckily, as soon as we got to the bus station there was a bus about to leave that we got straight on to and made it to the airport in perfect time. 

After checking in, we got an earlyish lunch as we knew we wouldn't land until late afternoon. For an airport, it wasn't actually too expensive so we chose a chicken curry with a pancake thing (might have been called a dosai) each (a little too spicy for me but still very nice). It was time to board our flight by the time we'd finished eating so strolled onto the plane and landed in Brunei just before 4pm. 

We quickly discovered the airport wasn't large which didn't matter too much but meant that there weren't very frequent buses into the centre of Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei. Nevertheless, we found the bus stop and waited for a good half an hour whilst the taxi guys laughed at us. In the end, we gave up and got a taxi straight to our hotel (which was a little out of town anyway) that probably would have cost nearly the same as two buses. Still, I felt like we were giving up and so begrudgingly got into the taxi. This made me start to dislike Brunei. Anywhere with unreliable transport for a backpacker isn't considered nice. 

At our hotel, which we'd booked online (there was very little to choose between), we realised how far out of town it actually was. It was walkable but it was along a busy road so not the nicest. However, the hotel was clean (although very empty making it seem a little creepy) so at least that was a positive. It was tea time when we'd sorted ourselves out so we attempted the walk which took us about 40 minutes. We were hungry when we made it into the city so stopped at the first place we could find which was by the harbour. It was a pop up restaurant that had a few customers so didn't seem too bad. We ordered a good amount of food, choosing mee goreng and a noodle soup and a strange chicken curry that I wasn't a huge fan of. It wasn't bad food but it wasn't as good as some of the Malaysian food we've been eating. The mee goreng (noodles) was quite tasty with a subtle flavour of hazelnuts. It was more expensive than we're used to though which made Brunei even more less attractive. 

When we'd finished eating we walked a little further along the harbour towards the centre but the place was pretty dead so we didn't hang about long before cheating and getting a taxi back to the hotel to have an early night. My first experience of Brunei hasn't been a happy one.