The initial plan was to get up early and take a bus ride to Seria to see the Brunei oil fields. Unfortunately, my stomach didn't seem to agree with something, or everything, I ate the night before. My mom and I had more or less the same savory items in the Radisson buffet (including the baked mussels) but I ate more than twice as much as she did. Plus I had a truckload of dessert. I guess all that food turned my stomach upside down. I certainly felt it when I woke up. So much so that I barely ate any breakfast. My mom and I scoured the city center for a pharmacy but the only one available was still closed. We ask around and ended up in some store managed by Pinoys that actually sold Imodium. Thank God! However, by the time we got back to the bus terminal, there were no air-conditioned buses available to Seria. And since the trip to the oil fields takes 2 hours (during which time my stomach might act up again), we decided to just go to the Empire Hotel and Country Club, which was a lot closer and had a lot of restrooms ready for use.
My Lonely Planet book on Brunei highly recommended a visit to the Empire Hotel and Country Club, and upon arrival, my mom and I understood why. The place was lavish, with its very high ceiling, multi-tiered lobby, and massive columns. Some of walls were made of glass so you could look out onto the beach, the pool area, and the beautifully landscaped grounds. My mom remarked that the columns made the hotel look like a monument in Rome so she wasn't surprised when I told her that they imported the marble from Italy.
We decided to have lunch in the hotel lobby (or well, the 2nd tier of the lobby as the 1st one served mainly coffee and dessert). I had buffet again (this one cost about BND31 I think, or about P1000, still cheap for a hotel buffet!) while my mom, who was still full, decided to just get a sandwich. I still couldn't eat - I skipped all the seafood - so I ended up having a few bowls of soup and a lot of bread along with a few other solid items. Once we were done eating, we decided to take a few photos inside the hotel. This piano was set up right next to the lunch area.
It was drizzling on and off when we were there so the moment it stopped raining, we decided to head out and take some pictures in the pool and beach area.
At around 3 P.M. we head back to the city center but not before taking a few more snapshots inside the Empire Hotel. One of the most interesting pieces we looked for was a camel made of Baccarat crystal and gold. My book said the hotel carried two of these pieces, one in the lobby and the other in in their biggest and most expensive suite, and that each of these camels was worth US$500,000. It wasn't ostensibly huge so I am not sure about the accuracy of this piece of trivia, but I took a photo anyway. :)
The plan was to hit Kampong Ayer (the water village) once we were back in the city center but once again, the rain started pouring heavily. So we make another adjustment in our plans and head to The Mall (right next to the Rizqun Hotel) instead so my mom could look for more souvenirs. We lucked out earlier in the day because one of the shops in the Empire Hotel actually sold a lot of souvenirs that were not available elsewhere and they were nicer and cheaper than similar items we saw in the city center. But of course we needed to get more. :) We managed to buy a couple of items in The Mall, including jogging pants for both my nephews, before heading back to our hotel. We wanted to catch the last bus back so we didn't have dinner in The Mall anymore (the last bus was at 7pm and we felt it might be tough to get a taxi due to the weather). Since it was raining quite heavily, we decided against eating in the city center. we ended up buying bread and peanut butter in the convenience store at the ground floor of our hotel and eating in our room (our hotel was quite basic and didn't have any room service). Despite the stomach problems and heavy rains that caused us to change our plans a couple of times, we still managed to make the most of it. We still had one day left in Brunei. More on this in my next blog post.
No comments:
Post a Comment