I woke early on 13th May, and got my diary up to date while the rest of the household were getting up. I headed outside Wai-Fong’s house with the camera, to take advantage of the relatively cool morning.

The previous day I had spoken briefly to another Bruneian friend, Sabariah, who works in the control tower of the Shell airport / heliport at Anduki. She thought we could meet at the Shell Recreation Club later in the morning, so I headed down there on the local bus, but there was no sign of her. I headed back to Seria, and was finally able to ring Peter, an acquaintance who I met at Cambridge in 1983 (when he was chairman of the University Scouts and Guides Club – CUSAG) and who I happened to meet again unexpectedly when working here in Brunei 2 years ago.

Peter, who works for Shell, said I was more than welcome to stay the rest of the week with him, and it certainly sounded less of an imposition than staying at Wai Fong’s house, very welcoming though she and her family are.

Near Wai Fong’s house are the barracks of a regiment of the British Army – the Gurkha Rifles. For many decades these exceptionally tough, fierce Nepalese warriors have been recruited into the British Army as mercenaries. Outside the barracks I was amused to see an “old style” T-shaped British road sign – “Stop at Major Road Ahead” – these were ubiquitous in the UK until the 1960s when they had almost all been replaced by modern “Stop” signs.

The Gurkhas are in Brunei, I’m told, as a sort of symbiotic arrangement. They help protect Brunei, and it’s tempting oil wealth, and in return are allowed to operate the main worldwide jungle warfare training facility that the British Army has access to.

When working here in 1989, carrying out seismic exploration in the jungle, cutting narrow access lines, we heard that the Gurkhas were none too pleased about our activities. This was because one of their survival exercises is to drop Special Forces trainees (SAS, SBS) in the middle of the jungle, with no equipment, and have them find their way out, preferably alive. But once we’d worked there, all that the SAS trainees had to do was find one of our cleared seismic lines and run along it until they reached the coast road!

I picked up my luggage from Wai Fong’s house and got a bus to the western end of Seria where Peter lives. He let me in to the house at 1pm and then returned to the office to work. I settled in, did some reading and then rang to arrange to meet Sabariah the following day.

Peter arrived back, with Helen, and and we all went off for a sunset stroll on the beach, before heading out for a steak in Seria.

On the morning of 14th May, I felt no obligation to do anything at all. Peter had showed me how to use his video player, and he has lots of VHS tapes. His interests and taste in humour are similar to mine, and I couldn’t decide whether to watch a film about the great Reinhold Messner climbing Everest without oxygen, Jeff Lowe climbing in Alaska, Jasper Carrott comedy shows, or the old Disney classic Fantasia (which was the first film I ever saw, at a very tender age, and hadn’t seen since). The solution was to watch all of them! By midday it was time to wander along the coast to the Panaga Club – the Shell club – for lunch with Peter and his friend Tadhg.

Sabariah picked me up from the Panaga Club, in her flashy white sports car (which I remembered from 1989) and we went for a trip into the nearby town of Kuala Belait – “KB”.

KB was where I lived for most of 1989 when working here in Brunei. KB is a “real” town, on the mouth of the river, unlike Seria which was basically created by Shell, around their huge oil installations. We strolled around catching up on news, and had some more food before she gave me a ride back to Peter’s house.

After some more videos – finally watching some of the Black Adder series that I had never managed to see – we headed round to another Peter’s friends – Barry – for a meal and a fun evening.

Much of the morning of 15th May was devoted to the appreciation of Monty Python, but I later borrowed Pete’s bike and cycled to the centre of Seria. It was, of course, rather sweaty work in the equatorial midday heat (“Mad Dogs and Englishmen…”). My mission was to find 2 articles of food that I had become particularly addicted to when working here 2 years ago: Curry Puffs, and Custard Apple Juice. I found the former in Smarts Supermarket, but not the latter.

The comedy videos continued in the afternoon – who knows when I’ll again get to binge-watch Black Adder and Jasper Carrott… When Peter returned from work he announced the there was a Hash that evening and that he was going, and that I shouldn’t miss it.

I had heard about the Hash House Harriers of Brunei during 1989, but never went to a meeting. A running club with a drinking problem – or more precisely a “drinking club with a running problem” – their meets were announced regularly on the British Forces Broadcasting Service, which I used to listen to a lot. Peter and I drove 30 km south along a road into the rainforest – one of the few, since 99% of Brunei’s people and infrastructure is on the coast.

In a remote spot was a car park where a group of people – mostly Europeans – were assembled wearing running gear, waiting for the event to start. It wasn’t a race, but a “paper chase” marked by flour, by a couple of “hares” who would head out in advance to lay an interesting trail of a few km through the forest. This trail, explained Peter, would include false dead ends, that would force the faster runners to waste time and thus allow slower runners to catch up.

It was sweaty and fun and there was no competitive element, which, being a hopeless runner, suited me fine. People would yell things like “That Man?” to people ahead, which meant “are you on the trail?”. If the leaders had lost the trail due to a dead end they would reply “Checking!!“. Once on the trail again everyone would yell “On-On!!” and we’d all run off again through virgin rainforest.

As the sun was dipping to the horizon we got back to the car park (the “On In“) where the “Circle” was held. This raucous tradition involved singing rude and silly songs and subjecting people to forfeits.

Normally (in other countries) a forfeit would be a “Down Down” – drinking a can of beer in one gulp. However in Muslim Brunei it had to be an alternative which was a can of disgusting fizzy cherry pop.

The bottom of each inverted can had been removed and the forfeit required the victim to lift the can above his head, pull the ring pull, such that the juice rushed out in one go. Failure to drink it quickly as it rushed out, would mean cherry juice pouring over your face and clothes! Crimes punishable by a “Muslim” down-down included being one of the hares, being first back, being last back, and being new. So being new, I had to do the cherry thing… and it went all over me causing much hilarity. Luckily Peter has a good washing machine…

Back in Seria, after cleaning up, we headed to the Shell Panaga Club once more, for a well-earned dinner. Peter later put on a video of a series called “Red Dwarf” while I got my diary up to date.