Since living in Bandar Seri Begawan, we have only been to beaches a few times – once to Berakas Beach and twice (or thrice) to Tungku Beach.

The kids regularly ask for a beach outing but since the closest beach is around 20 mins drive, it’s hard to find the motivation to go – especially for me who is not a beach-person in any way.

Such a marked difference to when we still lived in Lumut.

Then, a beach trip would be at least once in two weeks because it is less than 5 mins drive away. So close that many times, when we went without any spare clothes and the kids were all dripping wet, we would stripped them down and drive the short ride home, without a stitch on!

We do not have the cleanest beach – the water is most times, murky at best. With the refinery sharing the same shore, health conscious moms would definitely raise their eyes at us for letting our kids come into contact with such water.

We do live such reckless lives in Lumut.

In Bandar Seri Begawan, we are lucky to live in an area where there are pockets of forests around us.

A highway right in front of our house is completely hidden by trees and shrubs and beyond the roofs of our backyard neighbours lie hills free of houses and full of trees – very much like our family home in Lumut.

Once, the view that I have from my living room in Lumut was of the thickly forested Lumut Hill – where moon sightings are performed and from which also starts a relatively undisturbed and uninhabited forest that stretched all the way to Kuala Balai (some 10 km or so).

However, for a long while now, this green hill has become an unsightly orange hill – with an ongoing highway project.

I cannot say that I do not welcome this highway which will make travelling between Telisai and Lumut faster – currently connected by a single lane and often plagued by slow jams at certain times of the day.

But I will say that for as long as the hill is bare of trees and greenery, it is no longer a view I look for whenever I look outside my window when I am back in Lumut.

There are many Brunei residents who work in the Belait district but chose to live in Bandar Seri Begawan (and vice versa).

When you consider the one way distance from Bandar Seri Begawan to the towns in Belait, which ranges from 80 km (Lumut) or 100km (Seria) and 120km (Kuala Belait)  – it may not seem that far.

On normal days, it takes about an hour and a half of regular speed to travel from Bandar Seri Begawan to Kuala Belait. Pleasant drive for the driver and passengers, when it’s not too hot and the road is dry.

But when rainy day and road mainenance work happened at the short single lane road between Telisai-Sg.Liang-Lumut, what a nightmare that can be!

And I sympathized with the commuters of cars I passed by on my way down to Lumut earlier this week, from a closed-off lane at Sg. Liang that stretched all the way to Lumut (a few kilometres away) looking set to be stuck for an hour or so – when they have at least another 70km to go.

In the rain – when nighttime was descending.

Just one of those days when driving becomes an occasional stress factor in our relatively stress-free driving country.

It’s wonderful to be waking up to the sounds of the roosters again – even if they started crowing since 3 a.m.

To not hear police sirens regularly or the garbage trucks as they go down our lanes.

When the kids decided that they have had enough of sleeping, they can wake up early and go play – without us being on alert because their Ah Mah and Ah Kong will already be up and about to mind them.

Even the jovial noise of an outdoor merry-making at the neighbour’s with their unrestrained laughters and screaming children, breaking the silence of our kampung becomes pleasant background noise with the wider spaces between our homes – unlike our weekday home where a sneeze at a neighbour’s front door gets me instantly tuned to my front door.

Actually, even the aroma of their barbecue – which can sometimes be in the form of one whole babi hutan – is comforting and reminiscing of the 10 years that this was our everyday home – and that wind direction and barbecue is a regular laundry issue!

Being our home but not our house, my heart rate went into a low drive. As long as the floor are swept, beds are made, food are on the table – it is a relaxing few hours spent catching up on news.

The children run up and down, making double the noise than usual, excited to be with their cousin again – while the baby spent unmonitored moments exploring her Ah Mah‘s table to find lotion to lather on her face…yes, the BABY!

Still, the holiday must end and it’s a home trip back to reality – and the cousin left behind will start counting the hours until the next weekend – starting from Wednesday.

Bandar Seri Begawan has many things – but the one thing you can get easily and cheaply only in Lumut is jagung (corn).

There used to be a row of makeshift stalls before the traffic light to SPARKS and the Lumut-Seria highway (if you’re coming from Bandar Seri Begawan) that sells jagung manis, jagung Labi, better jagung that those from the supermarkets  and some seasonal local fruits.

This used to be THE place to stop by for a bunch of jagung for travellers from both side of the traffic (from Bandar or Kuala Belait) for their usual 18 corns for $5.

But this stalls were demolished since the new Gerai Lumut was completed, a few hundred meters after the start of the Lumut-Seria highway on the side of the road that leads to Seria. And business seems to have gone down too.

This new stall is mostly empty – despite having proper counters for the sellers, parking spaces for buyers, electricity and FREE TOILET facilities.

We ourselves only decided to dropby here once  and at that time, only two sellers were around. One seller told us what we could see ourselves – the location is not good.

Accessible only for traffic going to Seria as those from the other side need to do 2 U-turns. Not visible enough from the highway that it is easily missed and nobody will turn back (unless they are very desperate – for the toilets).

To cut it short, it’s a great facility in a poor location – and looks like we won’t be having jagung for a while until we spot the next makeshift stalls by the roadside.

Early one morning at home in Bandar Seri Begawan, there was a distinct smell of smoke in the air.

It instantly brought me back to our family home in Lumut.

Haze and bush fires  are regular occurence during dry seasons – not to mention open burning which happens throughout the year in our neighbourhood. Since our area are surrounded by forests, this was the smell that we are very familiar with.

I enjoy faint wisp of it but not when the smoke arrives before the clothes being hung outside are dry.

But we are used to it. It is a part of life in Lumut.

Much like the sound of our neighbours’ roosters crowing early in the morning. There are none in my current neighbourhood and being an area with a much larger population, it is surprisingly quiet and it can feel quite lonesome.

Unlike Lumut, with the comforting crows of the roosters at the crack of dawn as they welcome the new day.

Having family members who work in the oil & gas industry, going offshore is a common buzzword in our household.

There is a certain mystery to this part of their job which stem from the fact that their offshore work site is a place I will never set foot on.

I will never know what it’s like to climb ladders to go up a structure where one missed step meant an unexpected dip in seawater. Or to walk along open platform holding tight to metal railings because the wind threatened to blow your whole body up. Or to experience sea storms when trapped on platforms without any shelter.

Even the journey to offshore, either by boat or helicopter is interesting – to me who will never have the pleasure.

However, I now know for sure what my husband meant when he said that a boat ride to go offshore is not for the weak-stomach.

And as much as I still find going offshore a fascinating part of their job – I no longer wish I can experience it – at least, not by sea!

When the country’s beloved monarch came over for a visit recently, nearly everyone from the community turned up to receive him.

Despite his very packed itinerary, he gracefully met the throngs of people waiting to greet him and accepted tall stacks of private letters – the fastest way to get his urgent attention without going through the normal channels.

One resident managed to get him to read about his plight on the spot!

His Majesty consented to visit this man’s residence at that very moment and thrashed through thick bushes and clutter with nary a thought for his safety – just so he could personally inspect this man’s residence.

I could hear the awe in the voices of those who relayed this story to me – as they joined the monarch on this inspection and had to refrain from venturing further than their cars because this man’s place was in such a dilapidated condition.

How lucky this man was to get his royal attention and successfully highlighted to the monarch how hard it must be for the poor to get help.

How frustrated this monarch must be to find that such living conditions still present in Brunei despite his government’s effort to provide help….and perhaps even a tad annoyed that an able-bodied person with no physical or mental disability could still be at such a disadvantage situation in his country?