Muara, Brunei. Review..

[Malemew]

Hi,

 

I’m not sure if anyone in the future may find this useful, but I thought I’d start this as we found it pretty tricky to find any info on Muara before we came.

 

My review may be pretty bleak but I welcome others to add any more info. 

in the terminal we saw a tourist info, a desk for the ‘dart’ taxi company. Some small local handicraft stalls, there was a lady selling tickets to the city for 20BND (she was surrounded and we couldn’t work that out as there was supposed to be a free shuttle) 

The money exchange had a long queue because of course you cannot buy BND at home. 
You are not allowed to walk out of the port, a free shuttle takes you to Maura town. 
 

We took the shuttle. There is nothing in Maura. It’s a small town with a few small grocery type stores, a money exchange and some beaches. 
 

It has a bank also,  but they don’t do money exchange. 
 

We tried to use the local taxi app ‘Dart’ - but we couldn’t get anyone to accept our request. 
 

we heard there was a public bus for 1BND that would take you too to capital but that would take 1 hour. 
 

Randomly, a bus turned up from no where offering a direct trip to the capital for 15BND return. So we opted for that. It took about 30 mins. 

 

We were given 2.5 hours free time in the capital and it was far too long. There isn’t really anything there. We could have gone over to the floating village but we actually didn’t bother (so maybe someone else can write about that below)

 

We ended up organising a taxi on Dart (yes we managed to get one) to come back to the shop early. It cost us 21BND

 

The driver was great, told us we were the first cruise this year (November!) and they only come maybe 1 to 3 times a year. This is quite evident as the area doesn’t cater for tourists. She also told us the beaches are desolate, no where for food / drinks etc 

 

We felt the whole vibe of Brunei was weird. It’s so calm, little to no traffic, the capital felt empty and hardly any people around. Definitely a different pace to other Asian countries. 

This definitely is not a port where drivers offering tours! We got propositioned by one  but his starting price was really high and his car looked like a death trap. so either try hard to book something before you come or at least book the 20BND bus at the port. if you’re the cruiser who just likes to look around the immediate local area, stay on the ship. 
 

At least we can say we’ve ticked the ‘travelled to Brunei’ box - but it’s unlikely we’d return. 

 

[Malemew]

Edit : the small shuttle bus didn’t take us to muara town centre, but a small suburb if it can be called that. 

[ssawjo]

Thank you for your report on Muara.  We will be there in January 2024 and were looking for something to do there.  There is a Tours by Locals person but is, IMO, very expensive.  But I can see why if only three cruise ships call there each year.  We will get off the ship and see what is going on.  At least then we can also say we "ticked the ‘travelled to Brunei’ box ".  LOL

[ssawjo]

Did some googling yesterday and found that the Tours by Locals person is unavailable the day we are in Muara.  Probably will be with others from our cruise, Oceania Riviera.  I also found that other tours are either pricey and/or will not do pick ups at the Muara cruise port.  So, we decided to do a ship's tour instead.  Not ideal but you do what you have to do.

[ssawjo]

On 11/6/2023 at 12:48 AM, Malemew said:

Edit : the small shuttle bus didn’t take us to muara town centre, but a small suburb if it can be called that. 

One more question:  Were you required to obtain a visa to enter Brunei?  

[IWantToLiveOverTheSea]

Thank you so much for posting that.  I've been struggling with how I can get to the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan, on my own, even though it's an hour away.  And I know there are supposed to be a few public mini buses which go from there to Muara.  But it's awfully complicated.

 

sasswjo, we're probably on your cruise.  I've been looking at Trip Advisor, and there appear to be some tours offered there as well.  But they're not inexpensive.  And I don't think they will pick up from Muara port.  There are a few excursions that interest me, but I'm a pretty independent person and like to customize a little too, if possible, so I'd prefer to do something on my own.  But I may just "cave" and take an excursion, or wait and see what I can do once we get there.  It's bad that we aren't scheduled to arrive until 11, but kind of nice that we don't leave until 9 - although we'd obviously want to leave BSR early unless transport was guaranteed to be better than I'm thinking it will be!  

 

Ah, the down sides of cruising.  Sometimes it's a challenge.  At times I'm very thankful for those excursions arranged by the ship.  I once went somewhere in which a ship's excursion was literally the only way to get to see something other than the inside of a port.

 

Anyway, thank you Malemew, for the information.  And sasswjo, if you find anything good, please let me know.  I'm at howardruthalliejoey at gmail dot com  I'm also on the Cruise Critic Roll Call.  

 

I have not seen any indication that a Brunei visa is needed, at least not for Americans.  Cambodia is a little strange from what I've read.  It appears we either need to go to a Cambodian embassy/consulate for that or need to use a visa service, as an evisa is not accepted when arriving at the Sihanoukville port. Going to an embassy isn't a problem for me, but may be for others. 

[ssawjo]

17 hours ago, IWantToLiveOverTheSea said:

 

 

sasswjo, we're probably on your cruise.  I've been looking at Trip Advisor, and there appear to be some tours offered there as well.  But they're not inexpensive.  And I don't think they will pick up from Muara port.  There are a few excursions that interest me, but I'm a pretty independent person and like to customize a little too, if possible, so I'd prefer to do something on my own.  But I may just "cave" and take an excursion, or wait and see what I can do once we get there.  It's bad that we aren't scheduled to arrive until 11, but kind of nice that we don't leave until 9 - although we'd obviously want to leave BSR early unless transport was guaranteed to be better than I'm thinking it will be!  

 

 

We decided, after much research and other considerations, to just do an Oceania excursion.  Prices are comparable to what is on TripAdvisor and at least it starts in Muara.  See you onboard.

[IWantToLiveOverTheSea]

I'm back from my cruise which included Brunei.  I found it a bit challenging in terms of transportation, but we used the Dart ride service and that worked well.  If anyone's interested I'll post more information a little later on what was at the port, in Bandar (main city), things to be aware of, etc.  I loved my day there, and was glad I made the effort to get there and explore it.  If nothing else, it's certainly an interesting place.

[elbowroom]

As we will be there in a forthcoming cruise, any information would be greatly appreciated.

 

[IWantToLiveOverTheSea]

On 2/18/2024 at 2:18 PM, elbowroom said:

As we will be there in a forthcoming cruise, any information would be greatly appreciated.

 

OK, my Brunei experience Jan. 30, 2024 on Riviera:  Port is Muara, 30-45 minutes from capital city of Bandar Seri Begawan. Muara is a small town with a beach that we passed coming in, and some bus (van) service to BSB.  The port doesn't allow cars/walkers/taxis, so we all took a short shuttle ride to a terminal which had a number of vendors (nice things, reasonably priced, and I believe some took USD and/or credit cards).  More importantly, there was a little kiosk with someone from Dart Brunei, a ride sharing company that offers rides to BSR.  We got off the ship promptly to be able to ensure we could get a rideshare with them.  They have a website.  Generally you can book in advance, but when the cruise day rolled around, they did kiosk sign ups only.  The cost to go to BSB and be dropped off was reasonable, but we decided to simply book one of their hourly "tours" in which you paid for a particular number of hours (3 to 5 I think) to have a driver take you wherever you wished.  I think they accepted credit cards, but I don't remember for sure.  We had Singapore dollars left over and used that, I believe.  So credit card would have been accepted if their app was used, and possibly in the port/bus terminal.  Or Brunei or Singapore dollars were accepted.  I wanted  to see the two mosques in BSB, plus the stilt village, and drive around a little in the city.  The drivers aren't tour guides, but speak English.  We enjoyed our 3 or 4 hour adventure.  You can pay $35 to add on an hour tour of the stilt village and a boat ride to look for probiscus monkeys on the river.  I'm not sure I'd recommend that, as sightings are iffy and so is the river.  But I did want to see the stilt village, so we paid for the $35. In the end, we probably spent almost as much as we would have spent for an Oceania excursion to see roughly the same things.  But I enjoyed having the flexibility of going where we wanted, when we wanted.  You can apparently pay a boat man to take you to the stilt village from the waterfront, but that sounded just a little more unreliable than I wanted; hence the additional $35 per person paid to Dart. 

 

Of course there were Oceania excursions offered, though I didn't really hear what people thought of them.  Brunei only gets a few cruise ships every year, so there isn't much tourist infrastructure.  But I found it a pretty interesting place, with beautiful mosques and some modest but basic other things of interest to tourists.  But it's definitely the kind of place where you won't be able to just get off the ship and amuse/entertain/educate yourself for more than possibly an hour. And some people may wonder why Oceania even bothers to go there.  I'd recommend either a ship's excursion or use of the Dart service.  I had lined up a rare Tours by Local excursion but the person had to cancel a couple weeks before the arrival of my ship.  I think the hours we were there (11 AM to 9 PM) and the uncertainty/complexity of getting people to BSB in a timely fashion for tours made him nervous.  And he told me that most people in Brunei have cars, so public transportation and taxis aren't all that common or even desirable.

 

Enjoy your visit there.  And if you're going to Borneo, Philippines or Vietnam, and want info on the ports there or what we did, just ask. There were shuttles.  There were commercial ports.  There were arrival cards.  SE Asia was complicated. If you get a Vietnam evisa on your own, give it to Oceania or they may charge you for one. There was a note in the Currents paper about that, but I missed it.

 

Get ready to see, do, and sweat a lot!  

 

  

[elbowroom]

Thanks a million.

That really is very, very helpful.

[gaeltrav]

We were on the same cruise and took the Oceania tour Splendor of the Sultan. It was very interesting and gave an interesting perspective on the country. Anything connected to the Sultan was seen from afar as all his properties are behind walls . We visited a museum of his treasures and exhibits of his life as well as the Polo grounds, golf club  an amusement park which was closed and a fancy hotel. We also saw some mosques and the countryside. Tourism is not well developed and cruise ship visits are few so infrastructure is not well developed