EMPIRE OF THE SUN
Empire Of The Sun - Luxury Travel Magazine
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Empire Of The Sun | |||||
| By: Glenn A Baker, pictures by Bob King, Issue 16 – Spring 2003 | |||||
| (Brunei, Borneo, Northern Territory, Australia, The Empire Hotel & Country Club) | |||||
| WHERE DOES THE WEALTHIEST MAN IN THE WORLD’S RICHEST STATE LAY HIS WEARY HEAD? WELCOME TO BRUNEI’S SPECTACULAR EMPIRE HOTEL & COUNTRY CLUB. | |||||
| The population of Brunei, the tiny oil-rich state at the top of the island of Borneo, is just 330,000, while car registrations well exceed double that figure. Rare is the family that has but one in its garage, even five being unexceptional. As in so many things, the people of Brunei – the so-called Abode of Peace – take their lead from the 29th Sultan, whose personal vehicle collection numbers in the thousands, with a reported 300 Mercedes. He has a standing order with Ferrari for each new model, one in every colour. Then there are the three 747s. Though a conservative man, who consistently displays great concern and generosity towards the citizens of his almost-storybook realm of no tax, high wages, free health care, free education, interest-free loans, subsidised holidays, and the annual distribution to the ‘needy’ of gratis houses, the Sultan does like to use his money, which has flowed from the billions of barrels of black gold that have been pumped since it was discovered beneath what was then a British protectorate in 1929. Brunei owns a cattle station in Australia’s Northern Territory larger than its own area of just 5,765 square kilometres. The state, split into two irregular chunks of jungle terrain, is but 120km from one side to the other at its widest, and within those slender slivers are gold-domed mosques, ornate and imposing museums and history centres, office blocks, stadiums, rainforest retreats, luxury palaces and houses, and a new hotel that is already the stuff of legend. With its only real rival in construction cost being the spectacular Burj Al Arab in Dubai, The Empire Hotel & Country Club, spread over 180 hectares out on a coastal point in Sengkurong, is said to have cost almost US$2.5 billion in its five-year assembly. It was brought on line in time for a November 2000 APEC Leaders’ Summit, with the Sultan apparently keen to impress US President Bill Clinton and other world leaders. Even the well-travelled Clinton, Putin, Ziang, Mori, Mahatir, Kim and Howard can’t have failed to have been impressed, or even overwhelmed, as they strolled into a lobby tucked inside a huge atrium with 40m-high glass walls. And they surely must have felt entirely at home in suites with silk-clad walls, handmade carpets, bathrooms of wall-to-wall marble, crystal chandeliers, roomy balconies, and panoramic views of sea, lagoon or golf course. The latter is an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus-designed floodlit championship course which itself overlooks the South China Sea. I couldn’t resist a peek inside The Emperor Suite, where Clinton had laid his weary head. Occupying most of the seventh floor, this sprawling 675 square metre palace, with a nightly tariff of $22,000 (yes, you read it correctly), delivers what one might expect – a grand piano, movie screens, lapis lazuli taps, sonic sound system, private elevator, carpets woven with gold thread, and even – behind a pair of heavy carved doors – a full-size heated swimming pool, jacuzzi and Swedish-style sauna. When cost is no concern and an attitude of ‘nothing spared’ is in place, this is the sort of hotel you end up with, one where the term regal opulence rings true. With more than 360 guest rooms, 63 suites and 16 secluded, free-standing villas, the Empire dazzles and startles. Pure pleasure is the professed ethic and the hotel, under the deft management of the charismatic Philippe Requin, lays it on thick. Wander the perfectly manicured grounds and you come upon a three-screen cinema complex with plush leather seats (often visited by the Royal Family), the Sultan’s Polo Club, a full drama and music theatre with impeccable sound facilities, an eight-lane ten-pin bowling alley, eight swimming pools, a golf driving range, gymnasium, four tennis courts and an equestrian park. Celebrity chefs, such as Michel Roux of Le Gavroche, are involved with the hotel’s restaurants and during Sunday brunch in Spaghettini, the Italian restaurant, access is freely granted to a room that seems to be made entirely of chocolate. The Empire and its extraordinary facilities meet the needs of both international guests and locals – those friendly, unstressed, reserved Bruneians living what the Lonely Planet guide to the Sultanate describes as a ‘Leave it to Beaver lifestyle’. People who tend to talk of billions, rather than millions, even if they possess neither. Certainly the capital city, Bandar Seri Begawan, does not roar with nightlife which may have something to do with the fact that, although it can be freely brought into the country by visitors as a duty-free allowance, alcohol is not sold in Brunei. And so it stands, its own rarified world, almost in a vacuum. On Mohammed’s birthday, a smiling Sultan strolls easily around a parade ground, greeting and having his hand kissed by scores of his subjects. He then leads, at an impressive pace, an eight kilometre run through city streets, those same loyal subjects panting behind him. Though crack Gurkha troops are stationed in Brunei, noticeably absent on this day are guards, weapons, snipers, pushy protection or paranoia. He may be one of the richest men in the world but he has less security than Madonna. If the Sultan represents an unbroken tradition or link to the past, then so too does the floating village of Kampung Ayer, where thousands of Bruneians still choose to live. Antonio Pigafetta, along for the ride in 1521 on one of Ferdinand Magellan’s spice-hunting expeditions, came upon a vast array of wooden stilt villages with humble dwellings, palaces, royal houses and artisans’ guilds, all joined together by wooden walkways, and came up with a name that stuck – the Venice of the East. There are today 28 kampungs, with a total residency of around 30,000, sited along the Sungai Brunei and Sungai Kedayan rivers. Indeed it is the ‘liquid highways’ of Brunei that carry most of the country’s consumer flow and trade traffic. On any morning or afternoon, you can slip just out of town in anything that floats and observe the entertaining antics of families of proboscis monkeys clumsily crashing their way through riverside undergrowth. Or, make a day of it at the Bengalong tropical rainforest, crossing over a rope-and-slat swinging bridge and climbing up plank steps high into the ancient untouched jungle growth. There you will arrive at the base of a sturdy, towering steel canopy walkway, which enables you to ascend, in five stages, more than 30 metres, until you are above the forest roof with views that really do take your breath away. To describe it as exhilarating doesn’t quite do it justice. But then, in much of Brunei there is a sort of altered reality that sets what one writer termed a ‘strangely fascinating anomaly in South-East Asia‚ apart from the rest of the region, from the rest of the world’. | |||||
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