4-Day Brunei Tour with Ulu Temburong and Kampong Ayer

Land at Brunei International, ten minutes from the middle of the capital, and meet your guide in arrivals. The afternoon starts gently on foot at the Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque on its lagoon, where the ceremonial barge sits on the water and the gold dome does what it was built to do at the end of the day. Continue to the Royal Regalia Museum, where the coronation chariot, the jewelled crowns, and sixty years of state gifts are kept.

As the light fades, drive out to Gadong for the Pasar Malam, the night market that is the real evening in Brunei: charcoal smoke, grilled stingray, sticky rice in banana leaf, and a first plate of ambuyat if you are willing. Dinner is here, standing up, and it is better than it sounds.

The big day, and an early one. A speedboat leaves the city wharf and runs east through the mangrove channels of Brunei Bay to Bangar, in the Temburong enclave, then a vehicle carries you upriver to Batang Duri where the road gives out. From there it is a temuai, a shallow wooden longboat, poled and driven up the Temburong River through the rapids to the park jetty, with the forest arching overhead the whole way.

Morning tea is served at the lodge above the water, followed by the walk in and the climb: a boardwalk through the trees, and roughly 250 metres of staircase up an aluminium tower to the canopy walkway forty metres above the forest floor, with the crowns of the dipterocarps at eye level and unbroken rainforest to the horizon.

Lunch is cooked by the lodge and eaten over the river, and the afternoon is spent in the cold pools below the falls, where the little fish will clean your feet if you sit still for them. Return to the capital by evening.

After breakfast, take a water taxi across to Kampong Ayer and spend the morning walking its boardwalks with a resident. This settlement of stilt houses over the tide has been continuously inhabited for a thousand years, with its own schools, mosques, shops, and fire station, as well as a small museum that explains how it worked before the bridges.

Back on land, visit the Jame' Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque with its twenty-nine golden domes, see the water-village boat builders, and make a slow pass by the gates of Istana Nurul Iman, the Sultan's 1,788-room palace on the bluff above the river.

Then comes the best hour of the trip: a small boat upstream at dusk into the mangrove creeks for proboscis monkeys coming down to the water, silvered langurs in the branches above them, kingfishers, and, if the tide is right, a crocodile holding station in the channel. Farewell dinner back in town.

A quiet last morning, shaped around your flight. Depending on the departure time, there is room for the Malay Technology Museum on the riverbank, the Tamu Kianggeh produce market, or simply a long breakfast and the hotel pool, and your guide will steer you to whichever fits.

The airport is ten minutes from the hotel, so nobody is rushed. Brunei sits an hour from Kota Kinabalu, two from Kuching, and two and a half from Singapore, so this expedition extends easily in either direction; if you want Sabah, Sarawak, or a few days on the coast added to the end, tell us before you book and we will build it.