Jacob Mojiwat / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 / GFDL
Capital: Bandar Seri Begawan
Population: 450,000+
Language: Malay, English, Chinese
1 – Ulu Temburong National Park (also above)
Ulu Temburong National Park, protected since 1991 as Brunei’s first national park, covers some 500 km² of virgin lowland rainforest in Temburong, a district cut off from the rest of the country by Malaysia’s Sarawak.
Longboats piloted by Iban boatmen work up the Temburong river into Ulu Temburong National Park, where boardwalks lead to a canopy walkway on towers rising about 50 m above the forest floor, level with the crowns of the great rainforest trees.
Ulu Temburong’s isolation helped keep its forest whole, while Brunei’s oil wealth, flowing since the strike at Seria in 1929, is often credited with easing the pressure to log that reshaped much of the rest of Borneo.
2 – Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque
Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque, opened on 26 September 1958 and named for the 28th sultan, Omar Ali Saifuddien III, often called the architect of modern Brunei, stands in an artificial lagoon beside the Brunei River in the heart of Bandar Seri Begawan.
The mosque is chiefly Mughal in style, with a dome covered in some 3.3 million pieces of gold Venetian mosaic, a hall for 3,000 worshippers, Italian marble, Shanghai granite, English chandeliers and stained glass, as well as a minaret of about 51 m, once the tallest in the country.
In the lagoon sits a concrete replica of a 16th-century royal barge, the Mahligai, built in 1967 to mark the 1,400th anniversary of the revelation of the Quran, and a footbridge links Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque to the stilt villages of Kampong Ayer.
3 – Jame’ Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque
Jame’ Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque stands in Kampong Kiarong, a few kilometres from the centre of Bandar Seri Begawan, begun in 1988 and opened on 14 July 1994 to mark the silver jubilee of Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah’s reign.
The largest mosque in Brunei, Jame’ Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque holds 5,000 worshippers beneath 29 golden domes, with four minarets of about 58 m and interiors of Italian marble, set in some 8 hectares of gardens.
The 29 domes of Jame’ Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque are usually linked to Hassanal Bolkiah’s place as the 29th sultan of a dynasty dating back to the 14th century, a count of the royal line built into the fabric.
4 – Istana Nurul Iman
Istana Nurul Iman, the sultan’s official residence and the seat of government, stands on the hills above the Brunei River outside Bandar Seri Begawan, completed in 1984, the year Brunei became fully independent, to designs by the Filipino architect Leandro Locsin, with interiors by Khuan Chew.
Guinness World Records lists Istana Nurul Iman as the largest residential palace in the world, with 1,788 rooms, 257 bathrooms, a banquet hall for 5,000, five swimming pools and air-conditioned stables for 200 polo ponies, across some 200,000 m².
Istana Nurul Iman opens its doors for three days of open house at Hari Raya Aidilfitri, the festival at the end of Ramadan, when visitors can meet the sultan and the royal family, with crowds of more than 100,000 in some years.
5 – Kampong Ayer
Kampong Ayer is a cluster of around 40 stilt villages over the Brunei River in the heart of the capital, linked by kilometres of plank walkways and inhabited for more than a thousand years.
Kampong Ayer has its own schools, mosques, police posts and fire station, all raised on piles, and when Antonio Pigafetta arrived with the remnants of Magellan’s fleet in 1521, he described a city of some 20,000–25,000 households built in salt water, where only the king’s house and a few chiefs’ houses stood on land.
Kampong Ayer was later nicknamed the “Venice of the East”, and old Brunei Town beside it fell to the Australian 9th Division on 13 June 1945, three days after its landings at Muara during the liberation of Borneo.