Brunei

Moving across the world to a tiny little country, just a little smaller than Delaware. Brunei is surrounded by Malaysia in the South China sea. It's famous for it's mosques, palaces and very, very rich Sultan (sultans have ruled the land for the last 600 years). 

So the country is tiny, but thanks to it's oil reserves, it's also super rich. (That seems to be the way it goes, no? See: Monaco) 

In fact our landmark for Brunei was the Istan Nurul Iman (English: The Light of Faith Palace). Remember that rich Sultan I was talking about? Well, he lives in this palace, complete with 1,788 rooms, over 250 bathrooms, and 5 swimming pools. To be fair, it is also the seat of the Brunei government, but it is considered the largest private residence in the world.  It was a cool $1.5 billion dollars to build back in 1984. 

We're just going to call him' The Sultan' because his name is ridiculously long (I'm not talking like four names either- it's like a freaking paragraph!) He's reportedly worth something like $20 billion dollars which puts him on Forbes list of the wealthiest people in the world. (He is officially the richest monarch in the world). 

He's so rich he has his own gold 747 to travel in, and over 5000 cars, including his gold plated Rolls-Royce. 

His brother, Prince Jefri, at one point enjoyed the wealth as well, until he blew through billions, and had a fallout with his brother. 

Then there's his son who just got married in one serious lavish affair.  (He has five sons and seven daughters with three different wives). 

The boys were pretty fascinated by this guy, so as they worked on their postcards I read them some sections of his wikipedia page. They said 'he doesn't sound like a bad guy.'

I replied 'Well, I skipped the section on sexual assault.' 

Brunei does have a bit of a problem as far as discrimination against woman goes. So there's that. 

The boys made their postcards. 

Calib's featured Kampong Ayer (Water Village), an area in Brunei's capital of Bandar Seri Begawan that is situated over Brunei Bay. Roughly ten percent of the country's total population lives there in homes constructed on stilts above the water. 

Peyton's featured all the richness of the Sultan. 

And Hayden's included the proboscis monkeys that live in Brunei's rainforests (there in his tree). They have super long noses (4 inches long), walk upright like humans, and live in colonies of about 20 members. 

For dinner we had Nasi Biryani(Celebration Rice), Chicken Satay, Cucumber Salad, and Bananas.  

This dinner earned five spoons up. 

Although, I will note, only Asa and I liked the satay sauce. It uses peanut butter, and I know that's weird. Somehow we thought it worked, but the boys did not. The chicken skewers were moist and delicious, and the celebration rice was a rice dish both Hayden and I could get behind (and we don't usually love the rice dishes). 

We were a little concerned the cucumbers being like the one's we had for Ulysses S. Grant's birthday way back when. But I thought they were really good. I guess the sugar and salt really kept them from being too vinegary. I ate mine, and was going to snatch some from Hayden's plate, because I assumed he would hate them. But when I looked over, they were all gone. Even Asa who hates cucumbers, didn't mind these. 

Brunei is a tiny country, so it just got a blue dot there in by not-yet-colored-in Malaysia. 

75 down, 118 to go! 

Next Up: Central African Republic