Meeting the Sultan of Brunei

I remember, prior to deciding to visit Brunei, being curious about the country and researching what there was to do there. I wasn’t finding much of interest and was not sure if I would bother with the trip, but then something caught my attention. At the end of Ramadan every year, there is a festival called Hari Raya. As part of this, the Sultan of Brunei, who is both the monarch and Prime Minister of the country, opens his palace to the public and invites everyone around for a feast, after which you can go and meet the Sultan in person. This sounded so unique to me, I mean it’s the equivalent of the Queen of England opening up Buckingham Palace on Boxing Day and inviting everyone around for leftover turkey – it just doesn’t happen.  By chance, the timing of my potential visit to Brunei was around the time Ramadan ended and finding out about this event settled it – I was going to Brunei!

5 Nights in Brunei

View this post on Instagram

I've just spent a few interesting days in Brunei. There isn't much to do there and the laws are very strict but, after spending the last few months in touristy places, it was nice to go somewhere that felt very different. And I got to meet the Sultan of Brunei.

A post shared by James Crescenzo (@backpackandwork) on Jun 13, 2019 at 7:07am PDT

I arrived in Brunei a few days before this event and began seeing what the country had to offer (for full details of my trip, check out this post). In the days prior to the event, whenever I had a conversation with a local they would excitedly mention their upcoming trip to the palace – “I/we go every year” was a common remark. Many of the other guests at AE Backpackers, the hostel I was staying at, had also timed their visit to Brunei to coincide with this so the event clearly had some appeal.

The night before visiting the palace, me and some of the other guests at the hostel arranged for a taxi to pick us up the next morning at 7am. Long queues were expected at the palace, so we wanted to arrive early.

About the Palace

Istana Nurul Iman, to give the palace its proper name, is the residence of the Sultan of Brunei and the seat of the Brunei government. In terms of floor area, it is said to be the world’s largest private residence and allegedly contains 1,788 rooms, including 257 bathrooms, a banquet hall for 5,000 people and a mosque for up to 1,500 people. The Sultan of Brunei also owns the most expensive car collection in the world, some of which are kept in the 110 car garage at the palace – his total collection is believed to be between 4,000-7,000 cars. If it isn’t clear by now, the Sultan is filthy rich due to Brunei’s vast oil and gas reserves, and the palace is a big demonstration of that wealth.

Visiting the Palace

I got up early the next day, filled up with breakfast (toast) at the hostel. As planned, the taxi showed up around 7am and a group of us went off to the palace. After a short drive (about 10-15 minutes) we arrived at the palace – there were already a lot of people there, so we followed the crowd to the entrance and joined one of the two queues outside the building.

The next part happened surprisingly fast – we were through security and into the banquet room within 30 minutes. Everyone took a plate and joined the line for food – different foods were offered by the palace staff as we walked along filling our plates. Our group then sat down at a table to enjoy the food – I wouldn’t say the food was amazing, but it was a free feast inside a palace so I can’t complain!

While we were eating, a second group from the hostel (they got a taxi slightly later) arrived and joined us at the table. After the main food, we all went and got some of the local sweets that were on offer. Again, they weren’t anything special but nobody is going to complain about free cake.

After everyone finished eating, it was time to go and join the first of several queues to meet the Sultan. At this point, the queues were split by gender (men meet the Sultan, women meet the Queen) so we had to separate from the one girl in our group (sorry Kiara!).

We then went and sat in an extravagant room, which served as the first waiting room. Fortunately, the longest queues were spent sitting in rooms rather than standing in a line. After waiting a while, the row we were sitting in was called up to go and sit in the next room, where we waited again until the process repeated.

Eventually, there were no more rooms to wait in and we were in the queue for the final part. By this point, we were standing in line in a covered outdoor area and slowly moving towards the final room where the Sultan was.

After almost three hours of queuing since the banquet hall, I finally got to meet the Sultan. As expected, this was a very quick meeting – a simple hello and handshake (no photos), followed by the same with many of the male members of the royal family. The Sultan has a large family and I must have met and shook hands with over a dozen princes in the blink of an eye. I understand that the Sultan starts brief conversations with some of the visitors (somewhat randomly, but apparently he’s more likely to talk to foreigners) but you shouldn’t expect this to happen – this event attracts over 100,000 people over the three days, that’s a lot of hands to shake! After the meeting there was one final, short, queue to collect a gift (a fruitcake) and card from the Sultan.

Once outside the palace gates, we unsuccessfully tried to get a taxi through a local app called Dart (like Uber/Grab, but not very good). There are very few taxis in Brunei and it seemed they were all busy, or had taken the day off to see the Sultan (our driver in the morning had already said that he couldn’t pick us up in the afternoon). While outside the gates, we started attracting some attention from locals, who wanted photos with the white people. Over my previous few days in Brunei, nobody had paid any particular interest to me, so I guess the locals asking were visiting the palace from small towns/villages and wouldn’t normally see foreigners. Some of our group were uncomfortable about this or didn’t want to take photos with them so started saying no after a few requests. Personally, I don’t really care about taking photos with strangers and think that, if you’re kind towards local people when travelling, then they’re more likely to be kind to visitors in return. Once it became clear that I was the ‘yes man’ in our group, everyone that wanted a photo crowded around me for a few minutes as if I was a celebrity, but I didn’t mind and they seemed to be happy with the photos.

We weren’t sure how to get back to the hostel but a bus came that was going towards the city centre so we squeezed on. This wasn’t one of the normal local buses, I think it was put on just for this event but we were unsure, we just knew it would get us closer to the hostel. A guy came round collecting a small bus fare from everyone and we got off once the bus reached the city centre. From here, we had roughly a 20 minute walk back to the hostel and were back by around 1pm. It was several hours ago that we ate at the palace and I was leaving Brunei the next morning, so I went about demolishing the fruitcake gifted by the Sultan earlier.

Points to note if you want to visit

• The exact start date of this event isn’t known until a few days before as it is based on moon sightings. To time your trip, check when Ramadan is ending and plan to be in Brunei for a few days after this. For reference, I went to the Palace on 7 June 2019 and Ramadan ended on 3 June. The dates change every year.
• If you can, get the phone number of a taxi driver to pick you up after.
• If, like I did, you’re going with a mixed-gender group of people that have just met each other, make sure to swap numbers. Nobody had the number of the one girl in our group and we couldn’t find her outside the palace afterwards, so she ended up going back to the hostel separately from us. Remember, men meet the Sultan and women meet the Queen.
• I’ve already said it but it’s worth repeating – go early. We got to the palace shortly after 7am and met the Sultan at about 11am. Had we gone later in the morning, the wait would have been longer.

Dress Code

The dress code isn’t too strict (for the guys anyway), but note the following:

For Men

• Casual closed toe shoes are fine, you don’t need to wear formal shoes.
• Wear trousers. They don’t have to be that smart, but they shouldn’t be jeans. I bought a cheap pair of trousers the night before the event from a shopping centre near my hostel.
• Wear something long sleeved – a casual shirt is fine.

For Women

• Cover everything aside from your hands, face and hair. You don’t need to do anything fancy, just don’t show any skin. Brunei is very conservative.

In practice, they seemed to be quite lax about the rules (at least for men, I’m not sure about this for women). Once we got to the event, I saw a number of guys in jeans (one even in shorts and a t shirt) and they weren’t denied entry. Despite this, I recommend sticking to the dress code, you don’t want to chance getting turned away.

I didn’t see any women there in breach of the dress code – this may mean that security are more strict on the ladies and anyone that didn’t meet the requirements was denied entry. Or it might just mean that the girls all had more sense and dressed accordingly for the event.

The hostel I stayed in, AE Backpackers, offered local style formal clothes to guests (free of charge) that didn’t have anything suitable to wear. One of the guys took this offer up and, while the combo of their traditional clothes and his trainers looked completely daft, it was acceptable.

Finally, is it worth doing this?

I wouldn’t suggest anyone goes out of their way to attend but it was certainly memorable. If I was being negative about it, I could say that I queued up for hours just to shake a dictator’s hand and get a free meal. Looking at it in a positive light, this made for a really unique day on my travels – I met the leader of a country, saw inside parts of an extravagant palace and enjoyed the atmosphere with everyone excited to meet the Sultan or the Queen. And I got fruitcake.