Finally after a week I got the chance to check out Brunei's well known water villages - these are just a short ride across the river from the main part of Bandar seri Begawan. I was touring with Adam Tan, the owner of Travel Hub.com (info@travelhub.com.bn ) a local agency that offers a number of personalized tours in Brunei. The homes are on stilts (parking is underneath for each family's personal boat, if they have one) and all the homes are … [Read more...]
Ulu Temburong National Park
The rainforest is one of Brunei's primary attraction and the Trandi Lodge puts one just outside the Ulu Temburong National Park entrance (via wooden boats up a fast moving brown colored river). The rainforest canopy walk has to be one of if not the highest in the world at 42 meters. Its built entirely of aluminum and towers above the forest floor. Our boat driver raced up the fast moving river with a powerful engine at his disposal. Minute … [Read more...]
Brunei Blogger Meetups
It was nice to meet up with a number of serious local food and travel bloggers in Bandar Seri Begawan this past week. I knew I wanted to visit Brunei for several months but bought my plane tickets 5 days before the actual flight! @zulfadly found me on Twitter at the last minute and was gracious to show me around the city, especially its culinary offerings as well as introduce me to several of his blogger friends. I met the following … [Read more...]
Jungle Greetings!
Greetings from the heart of the Temburong District in Brunei. As I write this its pounding rain so hard on the tin roof that if I was to talk to you on the phone you would absolutely not hear me, or I would have to scream! We drove for 45 minutes on narrow winding roads - using both sides of the road at times as the road was well flooded in places, our van bottoming out in the water. There is a film crew from Hong Kong here - 9 men and one … [Read more...]
Touring Brunei
Today I traveled with Michael, a tour guide for for a small local travel company ( info@travelhub.com.bn ). I signed up for one of their very niche tours - sightseeing the part of Brunei that produces all of its oil and natural gas under the control of Brunei LNG. Travel Hub offers a variety of day and multi day sightseeing tours within Brunei. This particular tour may not appeal to a lot of people but oil and gas are what drive Brunei's … [Read more...]
Greetings from Brunei
After using Bangkok as a base to visit all its neighboring countries and their neighboring countries I had run out of new countries to visit within say a three hour plane ride of Thailand (don't get me wrong, there are many places I haven't yet visited in the countries I've already been to). However I had not yet visited Brunei and with a non stop Royal Brunei flight from Bangkok lasting about 2.5 hours it was fairly easy to get here and spend a … [Read more...]
More Thai Village Life
We spent the better part of the afternoon husking and opening very mature coconuts in preparation for a big dinner tonight (coconut curry). I had flashbacks of Wilson in that Tom Hanks movie from several years ago. I've eaten hundreds of coconuts over the years but never from one that had already started sprouting. The inside of the coconut fills with a white foam like growth which can then be eaten in its own right or more appealingly sucked on … [Read more...]
Thailand Village musings
So I'm back in my wife's village after a hectic several weeks of travel in Japan and Thailand (hence the shortage of blog posts). This is Eastern Thailand, about 90 minutes from the wild outpost of Poipet, on the Thai/Cambodian border. I've been coming here at least once a year for nearly the past 10 years for 5-6+ weeks at a time. This is a great escape from the city and urban life not to mention the undesirable weather in most of California at … [Read more...]
Do not do this in a Bangkok Taxi!
Took this picture from back seat of taxi. Left to Right: No Crazy reindeer allowed in taxi? No weapons, certainly you wouldn't want that AK47 in the back seat. What, no doggy style? And right, wolves are not a good idea either, or perhaps that is a dog! … [Read more...]
Tour Boarding, Shanghai
Mr. Chen, the founder of TourBoarding.com recently wrote us and I would like to take this opportunity to spotlight his company. As I recently returned from Beijing I could tell there was a big marketing effort for this expo both in Beijing and in Shanghai. Due to the demand of the expo hotels are bound to be somewhat full during these months. TourBoarding is as taken from their site: "Tourboarding.com offers a new, à la carte, self-design … [Read more...]