Seaman Anoreth ping! Our intrepid heroine is in Brunei, of all the bizarre places to be. Further info will be in the post following this one. FReepmail to be on or off the Seaman Anoreth ping list.
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I am in Brunei, which is a ridiculously small country on the island of Borneo. Near Malaysia. It’s exactly like the NC mountains, if you replace all the Baptist churches with mosques and all the Ford and Chevy trucks with Toyotas. Also it’s a rainforest. Otherwise, it has the exact same unfinished road construction projects, random shopping malls, and abandoned/semi-abandoned shacks. The shacks where people live all have satellite TV dishes and new sports cars..even the leaky-roof type that are overrun with mobs of cats.
There’s kind of a monarchy/religious state thing going on here, with a socialist economy, price controls and everything. Very interesting, although nobody else wanted to listen to me talk about it. The native food is good. They serve fried chicken with curry rice (no complaints.) However, the hot dogs come with nasty-smelling mayo and parmesan cheese on them. Dairy Queen tastes the same everywhere. There’s also some kind of soda called “grass jelly drink,” which is disgusting. As far as I can tell, it seems to be made of grass as advertised.
I went on a “mildly adventurous rainforest tour,” which involved walking up an extremely slippery mud-slide (or “trail,” if you can believe the tour guide) to the top of a mountain. There was supposed to be a view with, possibly, the famous proboscis monkeys, but what there was mostly was a view with bees and gigantic ants. I caught one of those, and also an anole lizard. Then we went down the mountain again, with no broken legs, got into a bunch of wooden boats with motors, and went up a creek a little ways.
From there we waded around on various pointy rocks, went to a waterfall (that was cool), discovered some more ants, and then went rafting on the river. Rafting was nice. We got bored with it after a while and did the white-water part without a raft. After that we were informed that the river is infested with crocodiles, which was interesting. I didn’t see any. Then we had chicken with curry rice and watermelon for lunch, and actually fried plantains. Next I’m supposed to do some other boat trip in mangrove forests.
I liked Guam pretty well. Most of the island is taken up by a massive Navy/Air Force/Marine base. There are WWII relics lying around everywhere. I was told you could see plane wrecks if you went diving, but I decided not to because of the jellyfish and shark issues. I ended up going golfing instead on the Air Force base. It was a nice golf course. We kept getting charged by feral chickens, which had to be fended off with golf clubs. There were stray dogs all over the place chasing the golf balls also. There were a lot of frogs and lizards there, along with the wild chickens and dog packs. I tried to catch some of the lizards, but they got away into the jungle. I did get some of the frogs.
Part Two of Anoreth’s Adventures in Brunei.
Spent the day on watch with the local Polis Marin in their small boats. They mostly wanted to hear about what I thought of Obama, and, notably, didn’t recognize the names of any states other than Texas. The ones that spoke English seemed to be rather grouchy about the state of affairs in Brunei, what with it being socialist and Moslem and nobody wanting to visit. Also they wanted me to talk about the crime in Los Angeles for some reason. We sat out until about 8, and then I got relieved. They gave me more food...rice, curry potatoes, something that tasted like chicken and was probably not dog, bean sprouts and onions with lots more curry on them, and a small baked fish with the head and tail still on. It was excellent.
Anoreth is having quite the time! Congrats to her on the world travel.
Anoreth, I think it’s great that you’ve been able to see those places and derive pleasure from them. Are you taking photos?
Fascinating stuff. Please keep it coming. :-)
ping to 302 and 303
Seaman Anoreth has arrived in Brunei, with all faculties intact. Thinks she’s P.J. O’Rourke ;-).