Brunei to Kota Kinabalu

My plan for the day was to catch a Bandar Seri Begawan city bus to a boat to the island of Labuan, then catch another boat to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia. I was following these instructions, more or less, in reverse.

Easy, right? Anyway, there were three local buses and one express bus from the Bandar bus station to the port, so I shouldn't have any problems although the distance was 25 kilometers. I thought. I didn't set out to catch the express—it left obscenely early and I couldn't think of any reason to go on the first boat out. Plus, I wanted that excellent free breakfast at the Brunei Hotel.

But when I ended up waiting 45 minutes for the bus, and then had to change buses once, I started to see the merit of the early express bus.

I was still on the bus when the ferry I'd been planning to catch left. On to Plan B! The final ferry of the morning was the 10 o'clock to Lawas, Sarawak, where I'd have to catch an onward bus to Kota Kinabalu.

Grass and Humidity

I was allowed onto the new air-conditioned bus bound from Miri to Brunei half an hour before the 3:45 departure time. The bus wasn't even half full. We left promptly and cruised quickly to the border, where all of us passengers were stamped out of the Malaysian state of Sarawak. We reboarded and drove to the other side, where we all got off the bus again.

We were all stamped into Brunei, then moved into a small, older bus. An Irish passenger who lived in Sabah groused "This isn't a 40 ringgit bus."

But I'd read about this…there are rules about Malaysian buses going into Brunei. Never mind that the Malaysian bus was vastly superior to this Brunei bus. Rules were rules.

The crappier bus headed out along the Pan-Borneo Highway, a perfectly paved road that runs parallel to the coast, passing through small towns that looked like suburbs of Houston, complete with lawns, garages, fences, joggers, oil derricks and Shell signs.

Rain kicked in just before we arrived in Brunei's capital city after dark. This was the tropics, the weather reminded me.

At 7:30—the bus freezing from the overpowering air-con—we pulled into the drizzle of Bandar Seri Begawan, passing Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Ah, that was near my hotel! I'd seen it on my map. After circling round the block past the bus terminal, the little bus pulled up nearly in front of my hotel, Brunei Hotel, which I'd booked into for two nights on my bank points.

The Road to Brunei

"Ugh. Rain."

My alarm woke me up at six. I hit the snooze. I hit it again about four more times, and by the end, the rain in Borneo's Mulu National Park had stopped.

But I hadn't gotten up early enough to pack, clean up, go on the 0700 canopy tour, and still make the 0900 taxi to the airport. Or maybe I did. But after yesterday's 20+km total trekking, I didn't feel inspired to go up to the canopy, as I had in Ghana. I felt inspired to go to the national park lodge and get my free pancakes that came with my room.

I pulled on my clothes and dragged myself over to the meeting spot at 0700. There was Silvia, the park ranger that had led the night walk my first evening here.

"I can't make it. Sorry," I mumbled.

"That's okay," she said. "You know it's too late to get a refund?"

"No problem." I hadn't expected to get one, notifying them at the last possible minute as I was.

I went back to Racer Cave (my room) and packed up, showered, stopped by the lodge for my pancakes and Nescafe (you pay extra for real coffee), then got my bag and left my key at park headquarters. I walked over the suspended bridge, over the river and out of Mulu National Park.