The Power of One

September 13th, 2002 at 12:00am

8am in the Brunei airport. I’ve been here since I arrived last night at 6pm. This is the first time actually where I spent an entire night sleeping in an airport, mainly to avoid having to pay for accommodation and also because I didn’t feel like doing anything else. I hadn’t even looked at my guidebook until I was on the plane out of Brisbane yesterday, and when I finally read up on Kota Kinabalu, I realized that the best way to get there would be to fly because there really aren’t any roads heading north out of Brunei. So I figured I’d just find out when the next flight was and buy the ticket once I arrived in Brunei. Well the immigration people here didn’t like that idea too much, because I wasn’t allowed to stay in the airport as a transit passenger without an ongoing ticket and I didn’t want to pay $15 for a visa just to walk out of the airport and turn around and walk back in. It all worked out in the end though, after one of the women went upstairs and reserved a seat on the next flight for me. I had to sit around on the sidelines of immigration for about 30 minutes waiting, and I had a lot of looks from other travelers who must have been thinking I had been busted for drug smuggling. Brunei is not the best place for that mind you – punishment for first offence is the death penalty.

So I had a seat on the next flight to Kota Kinabalu (KK) which didn’t leave until the following day (today) at 3:40pm. Seeing how it was already late in the evening and thinking about how much I’d have to pay for taxis, buses, hotel, and food just to see Brunei for an hour or two, well I didn’t have to think about it very long before I decided to sleep in the airport. It’s not a bad airport to spend the night in – it’s clean and pretty quiet and has comfortable chairs for lying down.

I spent 2 hours online and then sprawled out to read my book for awhile. When I drifted off at about 9:30pm there were about 20 people or so scattered about. Well when I woke up this morning I was the ONLY person in the airport!! It was pretty cool. I had noticed that it had gotten pretty quiet overnight but with an eyeshade and earplugs I can usually sleep anywhere, and I just didn’t even realize it had gotten THAT quiet. I think I had a better night’s sleep in the airport than I’ve had in many hostels actually.

So I’ve got several more hours to kill here in Brunei before heading out to KK. Enough time to do more email and read my book I think. Which, by the way, reminds me to sat that I got a very sweet email from Simon the Englishman apologizing to me for the Attack on America (i.e. the Attack on Jennifer) the other night. Made me feel a lot better. Thanks Simon. See, there?s a small step towards world peace folks! We CAN make the world a better place.

Entry Filed under: Brunei