Thursday 19 June Two days in Brunei Darussalam

Why visit Brunei? To see a country smaller than the Wales and many times richer and to buy cheap diesel. It's only a 20nm trip from Labuan to Muara, the main port of Brunei where we could complete formalities at the ferry terminal. The Jackster motto is to travel the world stopping at as many places as possible – it would have been rude not to stop and say Selamat pagi!

We made our base the Royal Brunei yacht club at Serasa who make visitors very welcome. For a small daily cost of £2.50 we had use of all the facilities which included a swimming pool, immaculately clean showers, an industrial size washing machine, free internet, great BYO restaurant and complimentary use of jerry jugs to transfer all the cheap fuel we could take.

After clearing in we rendezvoused with our driver and van which we'd booked before arrival at the yacht club. A very friendly young man with long eyelashes from Qatar, Zahir, came bounding down the dock calling us Mummy and Daddy and giving us big hugs. First stop of the afternoon was the expat supermarket. With a large number of overseas forces and their families, many British, working here in Brunei in the capacity of advising and training the local force, there is a demand for western produce. Forget basics we dived in for European (less sugar) mayonnaise, French cheeses, pork steaks, Australian steak, fresh ground coffee and to David's delight, tins of Ambrosia Creamed Rice. Need and want weren't in our basket. It was unashamedly want, taramasalata, bread sticks. Nothing low cal. We grabbed a coffee at the new Starbucks which had excellent service as you would expect when there were two staff for each customer in the shop. 

Victualling done we moved on to the petrol station to fill jerry jugs with 400 litres of clean diesel at one tenth of the UK price and half of the price in Malaysia. The downside is you have to carry it from van, down the dock to the dinghy and then out to the boat.

After lugging our purchases from the dock to Jackster we'd worked up an appetite to do justice to a slap up meal at the club; baked mussels to start and then perfectly cooked steaks.  An indulgence, but we're worth it (today).