Cowboy Town

Kuala Lurah - The booze cruise!
Swiped from WeonSnonge.

I arrived at Bandar Seri Begawan on the 31st of October. My return ticket is for the 2nd of December. A social visit pass to Brunei is only thirty days. So if I follow that itinerary, I would most probably be hauled up for violating immigration laws. Don't pray pray. Criminals here can't even get away with stealing a refrigerator. So, my fatty boss drove a bunch of us up to Kuala Lurah (outskirt of Limbang) to extend my stay and have dinner. Just a thirty minute drive. The Brunei immigration is quite unorganized in general. The officer just takes your passport and stamps it without looking at your face. For arrivals and departures, you stick your passport into the same window at the side of a shipping container. Amazing. On the Malaysian side, the CIQ Complex is much more decent. We parked on the Brunei side and walked across the border. The roads were riddled with potholes and unlit. Horrible. Just out of the CIQ, one is presented with a Sugar Bun outlet and a whole bunch of restaurants crammed together. Imagine rickety wooden tables covered with plastic sheets. Suspicious characters chatting the night away with beers in hand. Definitely a seedy place. Smoke hangs in the air from the all the ciggies and BBQ. My colleague chose a stall with the best looking waitresses. :S.

Between the seven of us, we had stir-fried paku-pakis in belacan, stir-fried midin, grilled sole fish, grilled stingray, stewed porpoise (they took it out of the fridge and didn't properly reheat it!), fried calamri, five-spice pork ribs and BBQ chicken wings. Washed it all down with Carlsberg (was a bit high after two small bottles). Having spent years in Manila, my colleague loves to flirt with the girls:

"What's your name?"

"Umang."

"What does that mean? Lobster?"

And having noticed her red panties poking out from her hotpants, he continued:

"You like the colour red?"

Umang immediately got the clue and hiked her pants up. Straight guys. Yare yare. The total bill came up to roughly BND100. Yes, that MALAYSIAN town charges in Brunei Ringgit. Then we went on to buy some liqour at the duty free shop. More varieties than at the airports. Sigh. Borrowed some guy's passport to make the purchases. Apparently the rule is two bottle per person. No mention of the volume. And so, my oh-so-clever colleagues used up their quota to purchase mini Absolut Vodkas. Really no comment. So, I was actually back on Malaysian soil for a couple of hours. But I'm back in BSB now!