Brunei: The Sultan's Kingdom on the Borneo Rainforest
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Brunei Darussalam is a small absolute monarchy on the northwest coast of Borneo, surrounded on three sides by the Malaysian state of Sarawak. It has a population of fewer than 500,000 people and among the highest per-capita incomes in Asia, thanks to oil and gas reserves that have been managed by the Sultan's government since independence from Britain in 1984. There is no income tax. Education and healthcare are largely free. The social contract in Brunei is explicit: the Sultan provides; the people support the Sultan.
Kampong Ayer — the water village on Brunei Bay — has been continuously inhabited for over a thousand years, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied human settlements in Southeast Asia. Today approximately 30,000 people live in stilt houses connected by boardwalks over the water, with schools, clinics, mosques, and a fire station all built on the same timber platforms. It is not a museum of old ways. It is a functioning neighbourhood of a modern city where many residents commute by water taxi and return each evening to a home built above the sea.
The Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque, completed in 1958, stands in an artificial lagoon in the centre of Bandar Seri Begawan and is considered one of the finest examples of modern Islamic architecture in Asia. Its marble floors, imported Italian stone, and gold dome are a statement of ambition and faith from a small country determined to be taken seriously. Brunei takes both religion and architecture seriously. The mosque proves it.
