(iv) purple buses and food markets

I land in Brunei with relief I'm not the girls in the row behind. 16 hours done, hour's respite before boarding for Melbourne. Ouch. Headed home. 2 months travelling round Europe, met on flight back. Love travel.

I asked Halifax for small notes. I hold 2 x 100 Brunei dollar notes (~£50 ea). Thanks Halifax. Need to break a note. Where to become unpopular? Kiosk, ice coffee. $1 please...hmmm I'll take a hundred...

First test. Walk past Tourist taxi's, western style buses, hollers and posturing. Local bus. It's purple. Awesome. 'Where do you go?' 'Wherever you want. $1.'

Comfortable, local, cheap, helpful. Purple. We could learn from Asian transport. A previous trip involved 'transport top trumps' over evening meals. Listing 30 variants of TukTuk, cyclo, rickshaw we had used. Fun game. Fun travel.

Free tour of Bandar Seri Begawan (BSB). Locals dropped on doorsteps. Nothing too much trouble. No hurry. Concerns slip from my shoulders and fall by the side of the road. 

Hotel for 2 nights. Practical necessity. Only one hostel in BSB and no way to book. So tired I wanted a secure bed. Pleasant enough, small pool. Hint of abandoned 1970 luxury. Beautiful view of AC units. It's midday. Check emails. No message from home. phew. Just rest my eyes then see the city.

*****

The city is beautiful and abandoned at night. Alcohol free state. No drunken westerners pollute the evening. 24 hour coffee shops. Locals meet and eat. Small food market on city outskirts. The sights, the sounds, the smells. The scrawny cat and kitten litter skulk around the bins. Waft of raw sewage. Then, garlic, lemongrass, chilli, ginger. Fresh fish stacked on ice. Snapper of all colours, crab, mussels. Heaven.

First stall. Western price. Need a day's sun to cover apparent greenness. No thanks. Mr, mr, local price, local price. Would have to lose a digit to get close. Third stall works. Beautiful fresh fish, necessary decent English to prevent nut allergy disaster - not on day one. Small snapper. Local variant on seaweed, white rice. garlic, lemongrass, chilli, ginger. Beautiful. Only Western face in the market. Left to it, best start planning my trip...