You told me it's a beautiful Melbourne sunshine day. Well, here it's a beautiful Brunei sunshine month. We've hardly had any rain since the floods. Not sure whether I told you about that. We had serious flooding in Seria on the second day back at school. I've never seen anything like it in my life. It was like driving through the ocean. I had to wade into school. Driving back from school the flood-waters were too high and the car gave up. Fortunately another teacher was behind me and helped me push the car to the side of the road, where I had to leave it overnight, then drove me home. The following day I got a lift back to the car in a four-wheel drive vehicle. By this time the floodwaters had receded sufficiently to drive home. There didn't seem to be any serious damage to the car, apart from smelling pretty bad for a few weeks. I had just driven. 3000 km around Sabah for three weeks with no difficulty only to have car problems on the route I take every day.
Life in Brunei is quite eventful at present. It's Chinese New Year so there are lots of parties and visiting going on. We had a big party for New Years Eve. About 70 people helped us welcome in the Year of the Horse. Even Damien came down from Bandar with Tomoko and the girls (and some great sushi) and stayed the night.
Next month we have friends from France visiting us, Georges and Monique, who we first met in Cambodia. They were supposed to visit us last year but cancelled because of September 11. We have a four day holiday coming up this weekend, so we will drive to a National Park or two in Sarawak and do some walking.
I have attached an article about our recent trip to Sabah. Let me know what you think.
We expect to be back in Australia at the end of the year, even if we decide to stay another year in Brunei.
Life continues as usual in Brunei (slowly). We have had a couple of successful Folk Nights and various parties, etc. We went up to Bandar last week to see a comedy act from Australia (Loose Cannon), which was on at the Australian High Commission. We drove up again last Friday to attend a big Chinese wedding - the first we've been to in Brunei.
In the two-week holiday in April we visited Mulu caves. We had tried to do so earlier in the year during a long (4-day) weekend, but the plane from Miri (a little 18-passenger aircraft) flew through a storm and could not land at Mulu because of the bad weather and had to return to Miri. Rather than risk taking the flight the next day, we postponed the trip until the beginning of the term holidays. This time we had an easier flight. We stayed in the excellent Mulu Righa Resort for two nights and did guided trips to the four main caves. It was very enjoyable. The most spectacular sight we saw was in the evening when millions of bats fly out of one of the caves in a serpent-like cloud to forage for food. They take over an hour to pour out. The rest of the holidays we spent mainly at Similajau National Park, about three hours' drive from Miri, just outside the city of Bintulu. It was a very pleasant combination of golden beaches (swimmable) and forest trails. Our chalet had a long verandah overlooking the beach. Apart from locals having barbecues in the weekend, we had the whole place to ourselves most of the time. We did a twenty km walk on a forest trail leading to secluded beaches, and did not see any other people at all. We liked it so much we are planning to go back there for a couple of nights on the next long weekend.
Our French friends, Georges and Monique, visited us, and were good company. We helped them arrange a trip to the main tourist sights in Sabah and also to Mulu, which they enjoyed very much, but unfortunately missed the bats because of rain. The day they arrived there was a Folk Night at Sandy's and Peter's place, where we had arranged to spend the night, so this was a nice introduction to the Brunei social scene after a day of sightseeing around Bandar. I thought it was appropriate to include Chevaliers de la Table Ronde in my performance at the Folk Night.
We have decided not to renew the contract for next year. Two and a third years is long enough in Brunei. We will be back in Australia probably in January and hope to catch up with all members of the family. So we expect to be driving around to places like Bateman's Bay, Woodend, Bonnie Doon and wherever else we might find my long lost siblings.
After that we plan to travel to Europe and the Middle East, in particular, Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Alternatively, I may be able to find work in the Middle East for a year or two. There are a lot of jobs advertised in Saudi Arabia (not particularly appealing, but good pay) and also some in places like United Arab Emirates and Oman, which sound like reasonable places to work. It is too early to apply yet, as they are generally looking for people around August or earlier. In any case I need to sort out my documents, most of which are still in Australia, before I can start looking into it more seriously.
