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Belait District And Its Resident

A Venezuelan lady and I finally had a brief chat after being on a smile-and-nod basis whenever we bump into each other at the place where we send our kids for activities. Just a few weeks before that, an American lady and I enjoyed speculating the reasons for the power cuts our areas suffered from.

Shimworld : Several Shades Darker

Can you imagine having folks from that part of the world in this side of Borneo?

Remember, this particular side of Borneo with its two main towns (Kuala Belait and Seria) has only about 70,000 population, the capital city is nearly two hours and as someone puts it, 1Borneo Mall is bigger than any of its high streets!

Yet, even a typical housewife like me, whose activities revolve only around sending my daughter to school and the occasional grocery shopping can easily notice how cosmopolitan Belait district is.

Just a queue at the ATM machine can be interesting. Recently, my line was held up by a Thai man who mysteriously withdrew bit by bit (using the same card) and a Nepali man came to my rescue and let me took his turn while a Sri Lankan lady looked on.

Chinese faces at restaurants or supermarkets are most likely Indonesians and I felt like I’m back in Jakarta when I hear them say words like “Bisa” (Yes) or “Pantas” (Quick). Grocery stores are usually the domain of Indian men while fuel stations are most commonly served by Indonesian Javanese.

And where else can you see British soldiers in full gear and guns walking around town doing their practice. Now my daughters have learn to generalize all tall, lean and ramrod straight Caucasians as “the soldier”.

My daughter’s music teacher is a Filipino, our regular doctor is a Burmese and we have close family friends who are Mainland Chinese.

If you’re really curious, a morning trip to the only supermarket in town that opens at 8 am is the perfect place to hear Dutch, Spanish, German, Arabic and English of various accents being spoken as fellow mothers do their morning shopping after sending their kids to school.

We are so used to seeing different kind of looks that my children have learn to accept that what could be strange sights in some places in Asia such as those Middle Eastern women in niqab or African women with flowing robes and turbans are simply part of the Belait district scene.

Our towns may be small, but we are culturally more exciting than many bigger cities in the region.

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