It’s no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase “As pretty as an airport” appear

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In the bathroom at Brunei airport the taps were running. I don’t know why. I turned them off. Habit, I suppose. I still don’t know if I was meant to or not. Airports can be confusing places; particularly the bathrooms.

I found the only functioning bathroom in Brunei airport. Due to renovations. I waited at the end of a queue for the western toilet, whilst the squat toilets mocked me; their doors open, empty, ready and waiting. I felt like an idiot. I wish I could have whipped off my tights and straddled the hole in the ground. But, like an arrogant westerner, I waited and tried, desperately, not to look concerned at the water and paper that flooded the floor or the massive hole in the ceiling.

I washed my hands and looked for something to dry them on. A lovely woman understood the international sign for I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-my-wet-hands and handed me a roll of toilet paper. We smiled. I said thanks and wished I’d taken the time to learn some other thank-yous before embarking on this trip: danke, merci, grazie … I hadn’t even thought about the thank yous I would need in transit. I stood amongst women I couldn’t understand and plaited my hair as they adjusted their headscarves. I felt ashamed of my plait. I applied some moisturiser whilst they did the same. When most of them had left I turned off the taps. I snapped a picture. To remember.

I was confined to Brunei’s damp and humid airport for about two hours. There wasn’t much happening. Due to renovations. There was one little shop selling souvenirs, lollies and water (it only accepted Brunei dollars) and a foreign cash exchange window (clever). 

I really wished that I had learnt more about the place of my two-closer-to-three-hour transit.

As the plane descended into Brunei I pressed my face against the window to get a better look at the landscape. It was beautiful. Green and lush. Mountains and valleys covered in trees upon trees. They all looked like they were pushing each other out of the way; jostling for the best spot or standing on each other’s shoulders like a crowd in a mosh-pit.

Low clouds covered the valley, slowly rolling by … no, no – not rolling – they were really too wispy to be rolling. The clouds reminded me of that stuff Mum and Nan would call “angel’s hair” and spread over the artificial branches of our artificial Christmas tree to create an artificial winter wonderland in the midst of Perth’s very hot summer. The trees here were greener than any of our fake Christmas trees.

The trees thinned out to make way for little pockets of little houses and little driveways that lead up to little doors. The trees fight for space, gathered together in mournful gangs here and there until there are more houses than trees. Still, it is nothing like the roofs and roofs and roofs that cover the aerial view of Melbourne. The roofs as we come into land at Brunei are blue and red and yellow and orange.

There are some spots where the houses look exactly the same; like someone had gone crazy with the copy + paste function – identical blue roofs all in a neat little row, identical triangular houses built around a cleared rectangle. Suddenly one massive house interrupts the pattern – a manor house with a red roof and manicured lawn.

Next time I’d like to leave the musty airport and feel the damp air and humidity against my face and, maybe, meet the people who live in those identical houses. I wonder if those identical houses are part of a new development, an estate, something the people here have been given as some sort of dream they feel they have to aspire to. I hope it never becomes the roof rather than the tree jostling for the best spot.

I want to learn more about Brunei.

I want to know when to join a queue.

I want to know more about clouds.

But, I am in transit …