Brunei - The Brunei Museum

The Brunei museum is located about 6km out of town. It serves as a show case of all things Bruneian. The outside is elaborately decorated with tribal motives and manicured lawns. Inside though, is where you have to be careful.


Inside, you're greeted by some very dour ladies. They wait till you're just about to go into the first exhibit "Oil and Gas Gallery" before calling you back and telling you to put your bag into a locker. Fair enough. I was to find in the next day, that this was pretty standard. I don't know why though. Did they expect people to try and smuggle some exhibits into their bags? I can't imagine there's much of a market for samples of petroleum products, no matter how classy the display is!

The Oil and Gas gallery was actually a lot more interesting than I was expecting. It shows how Brunei has become so fabulously wealthy from all the offshore oil deposits. In the nineteenth century, Brunei was really badly shafted out of most of it's land territory, so it must have been sweet revenge to find so much oil richness in the sea!


For me, the highlight was probably the Islamic Art Gallery. There' some rather snazzy illuminated Korans, as well as a whole bunch of pots, swords, shields and jugs. Very ornate, very pretty. I guess if you had your bag with you, this is the stuff you'd be wanting to knick!

Of a slightly comical nature is the Muslim Life Gallery. There's some hilarious diorama of life in the kampung. Best of all, is the picture of the young man being circumcised with a great big smile on his face! What was really interesting though, was all the toys kids made from the local plants. One such game was a sled made out of a palm frond. The bit that attaches to the stem of the tree was attached to some ropes, one kid sat on it and two other kids dragged him along. It sounds like such fun! Slightly more sinister were various projectile weapons fashioned from ratan canes. Young boys just love their senseless violence.

The final gallery was "Sunken Treasures of Borneo" or some such. From the looks of it, this was an exhibit mounted to go around Australia at the start of this century. When it was finished touring, it was plonked into this museum. Most of the Brunei Museum is old style museum - displays behind glass cases. The Sunkes Treasure was new museum - all interactive and groovy. For that reason, it seemed out of place and a little lame.


I did manage to snap a few pics inside the museum with my cunningly hidden camera phone, but I was sure I was going to be arrested when I tried to leave. The ladies at the front desk looked like they didn't take kindly to visitors interrupting their day long gossip session!

The museum is definitely worth a trip. Let's face it, if you're in Bandar Seri Begawan for any period of time, you're going to be struggling to fill in your time. With that spirit in mind, I decided to walk the 6km back to town in 37C heat. After 4km, I started to think that was a very bad idea...