Water Village and New Mosque in Brunei

[Introduction]

I traveled to Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur and Penang) and Brunei for a week, while I attended my Malaysian friend’s wedding at Kuala Lumpur. In this article, I will write about water village and new mosque in Brunei, as part of Day 7.

[Visit Places (series of articles)]
* Day 1 (1) Flying to Kuala Lumpur (Related article)
* Day 1 (2) Night view of Petronas Twin Towers (Related article)
* Day 2 (1) Petronas Twin Towers and Suria KLCC (Related article)
* Day 2 (2) Aquaria KLCC (Related article)
* Day 2 (3) Bukit Bintang (Related article)
* Day 3 (1) Colonial architecture in Penang (Related article)
* Day 3 (2) Pinang Peranakan Mansion and Eastern & Oriental Hotel (Related article)
* Day 3 (3) Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion (Blue Mansion) (Related article)
* Day 4 (1) Ethnic architecture in Penang (Related article)
* Day 4 (2) Art works in Penang (Related article)
* Day 5 (1) Masjid Negara and Islamic Arts Museum (Related article)
* Day 5 (2) Chinatown (Related article)
* Day 6 (1) Royal Regalia (Related article)
* Day 6 (2) Old Mosque (Related article)
* Day 7 (1) Water Village, New Mosque and Gadong area (This article)
* Day 7 (2) Empire Hotel (Related article)
(Day 1, 2, 5, 6: Kuala Lumpur, Day 3, 4: Penang, Day 6, 7: Brunei)

[Travel Dates]
2015.9.22 – 29

NOTE: as the blog title suggests, I mainly write about my travel around Japan, but I will write about my overseas travel in this series.

[Main Part]

Day 2 in Brunei and the final day in my whole trip. In the morning, I visited the Water Village, New Mosque and the Gadong Town.

Water Village

Kampong Ayer is a water village in Brunei’s capital city Bandar Seri Begawan. There are 42 villages and 39,000 people live there. Kampong Ayer is the largest water village in the world. Village people use water taxis as their transportation and tourists are able to hire water taxis to go around the water village. So, I chartered a water taxi to go there.

Water taxi stands are located near Yayasan Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Complex which I visited the previous day.

Water taxis ran like this.

While many water taxi drivers offered me to use their taxis, I chose a taxi driver who wore red cloths.

Now, I chartered a water taxi and started to go around the water village.

First, the exterior of the water village. In the water village, infrastructures are developed such as hospitals, schools and stores.

It seems water taxis are indispensable for water village people.

Each village is connected with footbridges.

Water taxis ran very fast, so it was very impressive.

Now it was time to go back to the taxi stand.

The final photo was the taxi driver’s portrait.

In addition, there was an open market near the water village, so I just took a look at it.

Now I left Bandar Seri Begawan temporarily and moved to Gadong Town, which has been developing recently. I also stopped by New Mosque.

New Mosque

Jame’Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque, or New Mosque, is the largest mosque in Brunei and located in Gadong Town area. It was built to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the sultan’s reign.

Gadong Town

Gadong Town is a new commercial area located between downtown area and the airport. Recently, several shopping malls and hotels have been constructed, so the area has been developing.

“The Mall”, a shopping mall.

Walking around the town.

Now, I will have a lunch.

Although I stayed in Brunei, I had a lunch at Jollibee, a Filipino multinational chain of fast food restaurants.

[Closing]

That’s it for the article about Water Village and New Mosque in Brunei. It is true the most famous tourist spot in Brunei is Old Mosque, but I found other places were also attractive 🙂

In the next article, I will write about Empire Hotel as the last article in the series of the trip to Malaysia and Brunei.

［Related Link］
Brunei Toursim