I’ve been in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei for the last two nights. First arriving on a ferry from KK on Wednesday. I didn’t get any sleep the night before I left so I spent the whole ferry ride snoozing away.  The ride to get here was uneventful and don’t know if I should include anything of the experience in this entry.

My impression of Brunei so far is mixed. It’s clean, and there is a strong sense of order everywhere you go. Which, I might add is kind of nice…at first. Not long after getting here I started to notice many things that raised an eyebrow. The first being that tobacco is illegal, well not exactly illegal, but the way it was explained to me was that I should hide my cigarette if I saw a policeman. You can’t buy cigarettes here, but you can smoke if you aren’t visible in public—I think that’s how it is, but honestly I can’t get a straight answer, some say it’s illegal, some say it is okay to smoke in certain areas.

Alcohol is illegal. Not really that big of deal to me. I can take or leave alcohol and since Brunei is a Muslim country I would expect them to be strict in regards to alcohol.

Littering is illegal. You can kind of expect that of most countries, but here you can get a fine of over 1000 Brunei Dollars, about $800. That’s a pretty steep fine when you think about it.

I was talking to some of the smokers around the hotel and they told me that they don’t have any fun here, that they need to go to Malaysia if they want to enjoy themselves. I’ve been here for about a day and a half and I’m already feeling this too.