What has happened in the las few days? Well on Tuesday we went to an area of Brunei called Seria because Vicki needed to find a school she has to go to later in the year. It took about 1.5 hours to get to the there. It was sad to see on the way parts of the jungle are being chopped down. Seria is where the Shell HQ is and that is where the oil refinery is. It's like another planet. We drove around for a bit trying to find the Billionth Barrel monument. Eventually we did. It was built to commemorate the production of the billionth barrel of crude oil produced in 1991. Not something I would visit if we hadn't of been going to the area anyway. There is also a discovery centre which I presume tells you the history of oil production etc. We didn't go in there though. It was nice to see another part of Brunei but if I'm honest it kind of all looks the same. Lots of green.
In the evening I drove to the shop to get a pizza. I've never had an issue with communication before. There's always a first time. I pointed to what I wanted and the girl it turned out spoke little English. I heard her say makan masuk which means eat in. I understood what she had said but I was unsure of the reply but I managed to utter makan keluar which was the right reply as it means eat out. I felt really pleased with myself for managing the situation although I did feel slightly panicked by it. Having my confidence boosted by our initial encounter I said terima kasih (thank you) when she gave me my order. I did say a little while ago to Vicki that I wanted to have a go at speaking Malay but I wasn't expecting that. It makes me feel relieved that I have spent time working out what certain words mean. If I hadn't I'd have been stuck. I do believe that if you go to a country for a period of time that you should at least attempt to learn the basics. Malay seems quite easy to pick up. They don't have pleurals for a start so person is orang and people is orang orang. You just repeat the word to make it a pleural. Also we have I, me, mine, I'm whereas in Malay they just use saya which means all of these. Keluar which I used to say out also means exit. It does make it quite a simple language. Although my limited Malay was no use when we went shopping on Wednesday when I had to try to explain what cous cous was.
Last night a group of us went over the border into Malaysia. It doesn't take long to get there but the main difference between Brunei and Malaysia is that there is alcohol in the latter. If you are not Muslim you can bring in 2L of wine/spirits and 12 cans of beer/alcopop and no cigarettes. We walked over the border so once we were stamped by immigration at Brunei to say we had left the country where were we? We hadn't entered Malaysia so I guess we were in no mans land. Vicki asked what would happen if you were to commit a crime in this in between area? Who would deal with you? Probably best not to find out. The area we sat in has changed since I was there last time so I didn't recognise it initially. I started on the sprite because it was too hot for beer. I dread to think how much booze was consumed by the ten people sat around the table. I joined in eventually with my two beers. I was offered wine but that would have been messy. A lot of food was ordered some of it nice some of it not. Some 'duck' came round which I tried and it didn't look like any duck I'd ever seen or tasted like it. The bones were not that of a duck. It was a strong flavour almost liver like. The bones looked like they were from a mammal. I have never seen bones like that come out of a duck. I just hope that the word wasn't lost in translation and it was dog and not duck. Some pork came round too and it was delicious, so tender. I almost went back for more until Vicki told me that I had just eaten pigs trotter. I was almost sick. I don't know why because it tasted really nice, I think it was the thought of eating pigs feet. I didn't have any more. Another dish I tried was jungle fern. There was one in a fermented fish stock which was pungent and tasted a bit like smelly socks would taste I imagine. It wasn't too bad though. I also had normal jungle fern which is exactly what it is, bits of foliage. It was like eating grass. Apparently you can't get this dish outside of Borneo. We had squid, chicken, fresh fish, noodles, satay and some meat kebab thing too. It was nice to try different foods. I'm not sure I would again.
There was a moth the size of my hand in the toilet which was shaped like an arrow head. That wasn't a problem it waste flying monster outside that were the issue. Every now and then you would see something huge flying out of the corner of your eye and wonder if it was a bat. There was a humongous cricket and then when I was talking to someone a massive bug of some description. This massive bug decided to land on the other persons head. Whatever it was it was about 4 inches long with huge wings. The calm that was shown by the victim of this flying beast was amazing. I would have been screaming like a 5 year old girl and probably crying. Unfortunately as the monster was brushed from the persons hair it landed under my seat. I was terrified it would fly at me if I moved but I couldn't stay where I was. I jumped up and a kind, brave soul shooed it off. It is probably a good job my jungle trek was cancelled in Langkawi because I would have been a jibbering wreck with mega insects like that flying around.
You have to get over the border before 10pm of you get locked out essentially so we made a move but not before a rendition of My Way by Tony and his backing singers in the karaoke bar. We all went back to Vickis and carried on where we left off and the Singstar was unleashed. I went outside and Tony was playing with his stargazing app so I asked what these two stars were. It turns out that actually one of the 'stars' was Saturn. All this time I had been wondering what the two random stars were and in fact I was looking at a planet.
No comments:
Post a Comment