There are beautiful countries in the world, but at the same time

dangerous.

Then there is Brunei, who plays in

a whole other category.

For years I was struck by that flag

so unusual.

Yellow in many southeastern countries

Asian is a symbol of nobility.

I believed that this state was inaccessible to

via its eccentric sultan and his

strict religious rules.

Some of them, if violated, provide for the penalty

of death by stoning.

I thought Brunei was just another monarchy

oil company born from nothing, very rich in Dubai style,

inhabited by entrepreneurs and crypto gurus, where

an absolute monarch holds an entire nation in check

population.

Then I visited it, I interviewed people

of the place and I understood that the reality

It's a little different than our media

they describe it to us.

So you might have heard from YouTube, from the news

people that Brunei is strict, not

you can do this and that.

No, that's not entirely true, okay?

So you have to come here first and see with

your eyes.

Many things in Brunei are subsidized, such as

gas.

So car fuel is paid for

half from the government.

It's cheaper than water.

Yes, everything is in order in Brunei, that's all.

follow the rules.

Thank God I live here, but sometimes

there's a bit of fear.

The first question you might rightly ask yourself is

Where exactly is this Brunei located?

Well, Brunei is a tiny country, big

about half of Kosovo or Qatar,

nestled on the northern coast of Borneo.

The island on which it stands is a case

unique, together with Cyprus, to be divided between

three sovereign countries, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.

Today, Brunei is home to approximately 450,000 people.

people, 97% of whom live in the

western part of the country, the one where there is

the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan.

If you look at a map from above, you notice

that almost the entire country is green.

Brunei is in fact covered for over

90% from tropical, dense, humid forests and

largely uninhabited.

Only 10% of Brunei's territory

is actually urbanized or inhabited.

And of course, watch out for the monkeys!

Among the protected forest areas, the Ulu stands out

-Temboron National Park, a pristine sanctuary located in the

Temboron district, precisely the only one

territorial enclave of Brunei, separated from the rest of the

country bordering Malaysia.

Brunei is an ethnically diverse country.

Two-thirds of the population belongs to the Melayu

Brunei, the Muslim majority favored by the government.

From a cultural point of view, ethnic Bruneians

They look very similar to the Malays of Peninsular Malaysia, so much so

'It's that they speak the same language, Malay.

Then there are the Chinese, about 10%,

who are mostly involved in trade.

While indigenous minorities such as the Dusun or

Murut people often live in rural areas.

To complete the picture there are many

foreign workers, especially Filipinos and Indonesians.

This seems to be a very quiet, peaceful country.

There are also few people around

the road, even though it's still time to

oh well, it's six o'clock in the evening.

Bandar Seri is in all respects

the entire nerve center, but also the political one

and economic of Brunei.

As well as the residence of the sultan who manages everything,

Hassanal Bolkiah.

Brunei, in fact, is an absolute monarchy.

Brunei is a newly independent country, since 1984

when Bolkiah himself declared independence from the United Kingdom

Since then Bolkiah has assumed all the powers

of government.

One of the important things that people don't

realize, when Brunei became independent the

January 1, 1984, is that in the newspapers it

they call Brunei is a new country of

new independence, but Brunei is a nation

ancient.

In fact, the Sultanate of Brunei has existed for more than

650 years old.

It once controlled all of Borneo, but now

'first the Dutch arrived, then the British

he was forced to cede huge portions of territory,

thus ending up becoming a protectorate.

However, House Bolkiah, to which the

The current sultan has ruled uninterruptedly since 1368.

The first Sultan of Brunei converted to

'Islam when he married a princess of Johor around

al 1360.

Thus the royal family became a Muslim sultanate.

So Islam became the new religion in

that period.

But we have maintained the Malay culture.

You can see it from the mucal architecture, from the food,

from the language and concept with which the

Brunei itself calls itself Melaio Islam Beraja, that is

Malaysian Islamic monarchy.

Brunei's most distinctive feature, however, is perhaps

it is given by the second part of his name

official, that is Darussalam, a place of peace.

Indeed, walking through the streets of the capital, you

he feels like he's on a set

cinematic, in a place too tidy and clean

to be true, almost devoid of stimulation.

I've been living here for about 15, 16 years now, moving here

It's very quiet, very peaceful.

There is not much entertainment, so for us

young girls it's quite boring, because we know everything.

There are only beaches and little else.

Despite what you might think, from

Westerners it is not at all complicated to get into

Brunei.

There are no particular problems at the airport, and

From Italy, a visa is not even required.

To reach the country from Italy, just one

stopover for example in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore.

The only thing that is expressly requested of us

is to dress modestly.

Yes, many people would consider clothes, so they

they would prefer to be more comfortable in their chosen clothes,

but here the social norms and laws

they dictate, they do not dictate, but it is preferably better if

cover a lot of your skin in public areas,

like our beaches, like shopping centers,

the schools.

It is fine for me.

I'm a man, so it's fine with me.

But many women feel oppressed in a

of course, but it depends on the individual.

The very term Haidi cites, oppression, tells us

allows you to introduce the elephant in the room

this documentary, that is Sharia, the code of rules

in force here in Brunei that regulate life

citizens' daily life.

80% of Brunei's population is

Sunni Muslim and since 1984 the sultanate has

used a dual legal system which provided for the

respect for Islamic law for Muslims and

the British common law system, a system that

It still stands today.

One of the unique features of the education system of the

Brunei is that in the 50s we had

these parallel paths.

This means that if a Bruneian student goes

to school for conventional education in the morning, in the afternoon

attends religious schools.

Once primary education is completed, one is given

them the option to go to what

we call an English secondary school or a school

Arab secondary school.

Since 2013, however, Bolkiah has begun to introduce

a new national penal code based entirely on

Islamic law, which came into force in 2019.

This means that anyone, even foreigners, can

be punished according to it.

To define this penal code as severe in the Western sense

It's an understatement.

It is obviously forbidden to drink, smoke and criticize the

Sultan or the penal code itself, have pregnancies

outside of marriage, to abort, to commit adultery, to take advantage of

pornographic material, do not attend Friday prayers

if you are Muslim, stay in private with

a person of the opposite sex who is not

a family member, having homosexual relationships or simply expressing

their homosexuality, as well as spreading religious material that

is not Islamic, therefore sacred texts, symbols or

flyers.

So when people talk about when the

Islamic law was introduced in Brunei in

2015 they don't realize that the laws

Islamic ones already exist.

They are already present in the legal context of Brunei

with the laws of Sultan Hassan until the

late 19th century.

It was only when the British arrived at the

'beginning of the 20th century in 1906 which took

the control of the laws and canons of the

Sultan Hassan who had existed for about 500

years were no longer used.

And then as Bruneians we think that these laws

They exist for a reason, so we respect them.

So I, as a Bruneian, don't think that the

our laws are severe, not at all, unless

that it is not intended to infringe them.

Yes, but violating them can mean being punished, yes.

with fines and prison, but also

with whippings, amputation of hands or

arts and death by hanging and stoning,

although, still in 2019, Bolkiah launched a

moratorium on the death penalty for sexual relations

homosexuals, after the numerous criticisms received from the Union

European and by well-known people like George Clooney

o Elton John.

This seems like a secondary factor, but Clooney and

John had called for a boycott of a series of

luxury hotels located in the United States and

in Europe, including one in Italy,

owned by the Brunei Investment Agency, a sovereign wealth fund

which Bolkiah himself oversees.

And what's more, Bolkiah himself often comes

criticized for his lifestyle all

'anything but austere.

He had three wives, owns over 7,000

luxury cars, including more than 500

Rolls Royce, and has been ruling since 1967 without any

election, therefore as an absolute monarch.

This makes him, among other things, the sovereign

and the longest-serving head of state currently

in charge.

Oh, and by the way, a few weeks before

of our departure, in May 2025, the Sultan

he had a nervous breakdown and was

hospitalized.

Its official residence, the Nur-Uliman Palace,

It is practically made of gold and holds the

record for the largest residential building in the world,

200,000 square meters, over 1,700 rooms

and 257 bathrooms.

The palace obviously cannot be visited, it is

can only be glimpsed from outside or by walking along

the river, as we did before.

A building that perfectly represents the double identity

of the country.

On the one hand the cult of moral discipline,

on the other hand a monarchical ostentation that not even in the

the gulf is no longer visible.

You may remember our documentary filmed in Oman,

I imagine?

Here we are truly at the antipodes of pomp.

sober of Muscat.

Although Brunei is still the main possession

of the sultan, the really strange thing is that

there is not, while walking, a single image of the

sultan, or at least it is very difficult to find it.

Don't ask me why.

Not far from here though there is a

another place that tells about the monarchy, but in

very different way.

It is the Royal Mausoleum, the Royal Tomb,

where the previous sultans rest.

Among them we also find Omar Ali Saifuddin III,

the father of the current sovereign, and main architect

of the modernization of Brunei in the second half of the twentieth century.

The mausoleum is accessible, but still it is not very

frequented by tourist routes.

Instead the current sultan, the one still alive,

he was born in 1946, but he was born in

a slightly more humble abode.

Istana da Arussalam, in the heart of what

It used to be Brunei Town.

A sober palace, today almost forgotten, but which

marks the beginning of a modern monarchy, grown

enormously in the span of a single generation.

And speaking of monarchy, in Brunei there is

still the nobility of blood, that is the sultan

can still decide who will award a title

of nobility to people he considers, among

quotation marks, worthy, probably not to the undersigned, this however

to indicate the fact that in this country

However, society is not flat, as in

any other part of the world.

Okay, so we also have social classes.

Social classes exist because of finances

of each family or their position in

'inside the company.

So, for example, if you are lower class,

What job do you do?

What is your family's occupation?

How much do you earn?

It's a kind of undeclared social norm.

Some people probably say you can't choose

your government because you are an absolute monarchy.

I think many Bruneians would say that this is not

It's not a disadvantage at all, simply because we've seen

some of the most difficult political problems in our

countries, region and so on.

Part of Brunei's system is based on the

fact that the king must take care of the

people, but the people must obey the king.

It's a social contract between the two.

So, this is the culture of Brunei, you know

say Rozan.

And of course, we can't know if people

that we interviewed feel compelled to speak

for the sultan's good or not, but what

we know that they have concrete reasons for

appreciate his work.

In terms of GDP per capita, adjusted for

Purchasing Power Parity, Brunei is

among the ten richest countries in the world.

Brunei certainly owes this to

resources that have allowed its development, and

which made its fortune.

Moreover, curiously, through the implementation of the

of five-year plans, namely oil and

natural gas.

These two fuels are still responsible today for the

half of the Sultanate's GDP.

Brunei's real fortune is concentrated in

'West, in the Belait district.

This is where the seriousness lies

the country's first major oil field, active since

29, and Champion, its offshore equivalent.

If you open Google Maps and do a little bit

zoom on the coast, you will notice a very long pier that

it juts out into the ocean.

That is the Brunei LNG Terminal.

That's where gas and oil come from

to Japan, Singapore, Australia and South Korea.

Well, the oil and gas billions

they wisely allowed Bolkiah to create a

truly enviable welfare state.

If you live here in Brunei you realize

that the institution is free up to level

university, so it's free.

Our medical system is similar too.

You pay one dollar to register at the

'hospital, but once the treatment started, he understood

operations and so on, it's free.

We also have various subsidies, such as the subsidy for

fuel, rice subsidy and

also the sugar subsidy and the

sale.

Then everyone is keen to talk about the extended

Brunei's housing program, under which

citizens enjoy discounts on houses, so much so

that 40% of the sultanate's homes

it is built or sold in a public manner.

All this is also possible because in Brunei,

thanks to oil, there is no tax on

personal income.

Zero.

The only mandatory contribution is social security, that is

citizens pay approximately 8.5% of the

salary to two pension funds together with the employer

of work.

Another interesting thing is the local currency.

The official currency is the Brunei dollar,

this beautiful banknote that you see, which thanks to

a convertibility agreement is virtually pegged to the

Singapore dollar and has its own

value, so you can use both l and t indifferently

'one or the other for payments.

One of the ways to travel here in Brunei

is to use taxis that can be booked

with an application called Dart.

Clearly there are not many taxi drivers, it can happen

to always find the same ones.

Yesterday speaking with one of these taxi drivers is

It turns out that they don't know in Brunei

some types of words or concepts that

They are common in our West.

Here in Brunei they don't know the concept of

politics, which says it all.

Moving between one interview and another for

the streets of the capital have the strange

feeling of being in a world where nothing

it is sold.

In Brunei advertising exists but it is not

never intrusive because it must adapt to certain

codes of social norms in force also due to

of the sciaria.

You will never see huge billboards here

on the main roads of the capital.

For example if you never see a billboard

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Now we are going to see Kampong Ayer, which is

one of the oldest villages in Bandar Seri

Begawan and even dates back to the 15th century.

Kampong Ayer is the oldest face of Brunei

and traditional, as it was before the development

of the last decades and is called the Venice

of the East.

It's a shame that the real Venice is definitely missing.

economic well-being.

We have the opportunity to talk about it with Nabila, president of

an organization that works to support

rural areas of Brunei and with Halima, a

woman who lives in Kampong Ayer, has seven children

and sixteen grandchildren and sells rice for a living,

noodles and drinks that makes her have the

his son-in-law.

People in cities often live better than

those found in the internal areas because

those who live in rural areas don't really know

what to do, they don't have the adequate resources.

Ah, if the water is deep I'm scared

Me too.

The children are small, I'm afraid they'll fall,

things like that, there are crocodiles here,

this is what is dangerous.

But after that lady told me

so I'm not so sure about crocodiles

flying a kayak.

What you see here is a school.

These are certainly not the conditions in which

one of the richest countries in the world should live in

world.

For its part, Brunei claims that only

5% of its population lives in

poverty.

But this is an arbitrary estimate, because

There is no threshold limit in the Sultanate

below which one is considered indigent.

Nabila claims that the government has the means

to ensure welfare measures for people too

who live in villages.

But Halima thinks differently.

Yes, sometimes needs such as financial ones,

you know, it's normal with children, school,

the boat, take the children to school and

and so on.

I usually ask for, you know, mosque help, things

of the kind.

And when we ask her if she asks for help

to the government and if this is enough, the

his answer is...

There is nothing, there is nothing here

friends.

The aid is not enough, it is not sufficient.

It seems very absurd to us, given that those who live

a few kilometers away from here, in the

Bandar city center, lives in conditions of

relative tranquility, thanks also to state subsidies.

However, we must not lose sight of either

the details nor what is left unsaid.

The quite disturbing thing here is that in

in some places the wood is visibly rotten, therefore,

in short, walking on these stilts is not exactly

the safest thing in the world.

In Brunei there is indeed a big gap

economic, but outside the nobility and the

Sultan it is not correct to make distinctions between the poor

and rich, but rather among people who live

with little and people who get into debt.

Some of the middle class even have jobs,

but they are struggling to pay their loans,

among many things.

In the last twenty years, asking for loans to buy

the latest iPhones or an extra car

in Brunei it has become a culture, based

on the belief that the money is there,

because there is oil, because there is

the gas and, in any case, the sultan will be there

always giving out subsidies.

Well, the problem lies precisely in this

conviction.

Money doesn't fall from the sky anymore.

We are dealing with two things.

One is the difficulty in obtaining oil.

In the old days it was much easier,

you just did it on the ground and so on.

But now we must go into deeper waters

to try to get it, then the extraction of the

Oil from deeper waters is expensive.

So the cost of the operation increases and so does

away, but at the same time the population is

increasing, the size of government is increasing.

So we have some ongoing expenses.

In 2022, a study conducted by ASEAN, an organization

of which Brunei is a part, he estimated

that within 27 years, so in 2047, the

Sultanate will run out of oil reserves.

ASEAN says so, not Nova Lectio, while the

natural gas will run out even sooner.

Not surprisingly, as the years go by,

Brunei has slowed down its production of

hydrocarbons and, at the same time, its economic growth, what

which led the sultanate to decrease the

own jobs in the tertiary sector and

secondary, and therefore also in the public one.

According to various analysts, it is precisely this economic crisis

underground in recent years to have caused the

'Tightening of Islamic law in Brunei.

According to this theory, Hassanal Bolkiah would try to

to keep the most conservative part of the court happy,

thus avoiding unpleasant surprises, such as a

beautiful blow.

The most obvious result of the decline in profits,

however, it is that both youth unemployment and

Unemployment in general is rising.

So there are jobs available in Brunei, but

they are low-level positions.

I, for example, am a part-time facilitator

in a small tourist site in a city.

So yeah, it was hard for me.

Even most of my peers face

the same problems.

Even Aidi, who recently graduated

in biology, he has difficulty finding work as

teacher.

I am not currently employed full time.

I work as a part-time teacher in some

private tutoring schools.

Young people often have ideas on how to improve

Brunei, especially to contribute to Wawasan Brunei

2035, but they don't really know how.

Even if they know, they have these connections and

everything, it just didn't work out for them, because

in the end our voices are not heard.

Wawasan 2035 is literally the vision of the

Brunei 2035 and includes various objectives, such as

educate its population to the maximum, completely abolish

poverty and create a sustainable economy and

successful.

To do this, Brunei must break away from the

fossil fuels and invest more in other

sectors, such as agriculture and the fishing industry, since

Fish is perhaps the most eaten food

from the population, as well as the source of livelihood of

villages like Kampong Ayer.

The sultanate, in fact, also by virtue of its

small size, imports about 80% of the

his food.

Consider that until 2013 almost all

of the beef eaten in Brunei came from

a collection of Australian ranches, overall larger

of Brunei itself, also owned here by

Hassanal Bolkiah.

And to talk about the future of Brunei,

one can not speak clearly about him, about

sultan.

Our perception is that the whole of Brunei

it's a bit like the garden of the house of

Bolkiah, a world left a little behind the

90s, where the private sector struggles

to emerge.

A place we will hardly understand, if we don't leave

from the assumption that here sultan and sultanate, therefore

Bolkiah and Brunei, are the same thing, and

that people not only believe it, but

maybe not even really happy.

So, regardless of what the media says

Westerners and so on, we are rather at

we are comfortable where we are.

So, so, I just got back from Brunei and

I still have this question on my mind for a while

rump, even after seeing it with my

eyes.

How to define Brunei?

In the title of this documentary I put rich

and rigid.

Well, we could say yes, but also no.

Brunei is not a utopia nor a

dystopia.

It's simply a country that has found a

very particular balance made of state control, of

religious faith and guaranteed well-being.

Works?

For now yes, but it's a difficult model

to export and perhaps even difficult to replicate

over time, as we have seen.

Because everything revolves around two elements that

they don't last forever.

Natural resources and the figure of the sultan.

Yet, talking to the locals, walking

on the streets of Brunei, see how they live

people, this contrast between modernity and tradition,

It makes you understand that Brunei is very

more complex and also much more normal than

as it is told from the outside.

It's not a perfect country, but it's still

a country that, at least for now, feels

safe.

And in a world that runs and

agitated, maybe this is his true self

luxury.

Through aspera, to the stars.

And we'll see you in a next documentary

very particular externally.