The Purple Culture Guide to Brunei

Chapter 1: First Impressions

The first thing you notice about Brunei is the quiet. It’s not the peaceful quiet of a natural retreat, though there is plenty of that. It’s the quiet of a place where things are simply … under control. There’s no honking in traffic, or at least almost none. People don’t shout across the street. The call to prayer floats over the city five times a day, but it’s a melodic presence, not an intrusion. If you’ve just come from Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, or even Jakarta, the difference is startling. Brunei feels like someone pressed the pause button on Southeast Asia, and then left the air conditioning on.

This is the country’s overall character in a nutshell: calm, orderly, and deeply polite. It’s also a place where immense wealth exists side by side with an almost provincial modesty. The oil money is visible, but not flashy. The cars are mostly new and mostly German or Japanese, but you don’t see the Lamborghinis and Ferraris of a Kuala Lumpur flashpoint. The palace, Istana Nurul Iman, is the largest residential palace in the world, but you can’t see much of it from the road, and the guards at the gate are more likely to wave you away with a smile than a scowl. The wealth is there, but it’s a quiet, self-satisfied kind of wealth that doesn’t feel the need to show off.

Most first-time visitors come with a set of assumptions that fall apart within the first hour.