01 A country with a piece apart
Brunei is not a continuous territory. The country is divided in two by a strip of Malaysian territory reaching down to the bay, so that Temburong district is cut off from the rest by land. It is an uncommon case: not an island, not a distant enclave, but a piece of the country you could not reach without passing through another country.
And it is not a minor piece. Temburong is the district holding most of the country's protected forest, including its national park. That is, the separation did not affect an unimportant corner: it affected access to what is today Brunei's main natural argument.
02 What it cost to get there before
There were two ways and both had a serious drawback. By water, a boat service covered the trip between the capital and Bangar, the district's main town, in about forty-five minutes. Fast, but dependent on weather, on swell and on a timetable, and with no way to take a car.
By road it was possible, going round overland, but the route passed through four immigration checkpoints: leaving the country, entering the neighbouring one, leaving again and entering again. Four queues and four stamps for an internal journey. For anyone living or working there, that was not a travel anecdote: it was the weekly routine.
Four passport stamps to go from one part of the country to another. That, and not the time, was the problem to be solved.
03 Thirty kilometres of construction
The Sultan Haji Omar Ali Saifuddien Bridge opened to traffic on 17 March 2020. It measures 30 kilometres, making it the longest bridge in Southeast Asia, and cost 1.6 billion Brunei dollars, around 1.2 billion US dollars at the time it was awarded.
It is not a single-span bridge: it is a succession of viaducts over the bay and over mangrove, with two cable-stayed sections on tall masts where navigation has to pass beneath. Much of the route runs over shallow water and marsh, which is what explains the total length.
04 What changed on the other side
The effect on the traveller is direct and fairly large. Until 2020, visiting Temburong national park meant mounting a small expedition with boats and timetables; now you drive across and can go and return in a day from the capital without a single stamp. A good deal of the guidance written before that date still describes access by boat only.
It is worth seeing even if you are not going to the park, and worth seeing from below. From the shore, with the line of piers receding until it disappears into haze, you grasp something the car does not show: that thirty kilometres of concrete over the sea are the most expensive possible answer to a problem that, on paper, was only a matter of borders.
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