Christmas Trip: Part 4

The next day, it started off badly. Due to some misunderstanding, we thought we're supposed to use the road to Ulu Pendaruan instead of Pendaruan... Pendaruan is after the town area while Ulu Pendaruan is before town area. Our GPRS could not detect the mistake due to some error (the thingy said unable to calculate). We drove to Ulu Pendaruan road, but as we went on, we realized the road was getting smaller and lousier. In the end, we stopped to ask for directions...the the guy telling us the direction was not good in it either. He just said you go straight, go left, go right and something like that... but the key word he said was the old airport. From there, dad knew we were supposed to drive up furthermore from town instead of going east direction.


So we made a U-turn, which turned worse since there was a traffic problem going to town center. There was an event organized by the Education Department and we were moving very slowly. Usually it will take 20-30 minuted from the point we made the U-turn....but instead we spent nearly 2 hours crawling. Luckily, the traffic went smooth right after town area. We drove on and finally went to a crawl again at the ferry area.


Yeah...we still have ferry operating there because neither Malaysia nor Brunei wants to build a brigde there. The funny part is, the river is so small that I can swim over in one breath. The ferry operating was small too, with a capacity of 10 cars per direction. If there are lorries, it'll be just 2 lorries per direction....and if you put another ferry next to the other ferry, you'll have a portable bridge. Seriously, we need a bridge there.... Somehow, there weren't many cars at that time and we were only there for 30 minutes. On normal busy day, you can get stuck for 2-3 hours.


After the ferry point, we were practically in Brunei again..Trusan. The road was once again smooth and straight most of the time. But another issue rose when we basically missed the immigration check point. You see, usually the check point will be blocking the road itself like toll points. But this Puni Immigaration Check Point was by the road side. You basically have to turn into a junction first. For first timers, you might miss the check point because you'll be travelling at high speed (smooth and straight road ba..) and reach the Brunei-Lawas check point without getting a stamp for getting into Brunei. So you'll end up driving back again for another 40-50 minutes to reach Puni Immigration Point. We were lucky because I saw 'Puni Immigration Point' on the GPRS...so we just missed the check point by 20-30meters.


At the check point also troublesome...we had to fill in declaration form and etc... I mean we didn't fill such thing when we were entering Bandar Seri Begawan..and Trusan is just like a small town. The guys there didn't even bother to put guidelines on what to fill and how to fill in the forms. So we were stuck there 10-15minutes copying others filling in their forms. Haiaya...


After going off the Lawas-Brunei(Trusan) check point...we drove on and took a break at Lawas town...It was already noon...

[to be continued...]