Brunei

Brunei caught me off guard. I expected a small, quiet country and got something almost otherworldly — gold domes rising out of flat green land, wide empty roads, and a stillness to the air that I haven't felt anywhere else in Southeast Asia. The Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque was the first thing I properly stopped at, and I just stood at the water's edge for a long time watching the reflection shift as a thin breeze moved across the lagoon.

The two big mosques — Omar Ali Saifuddien and Jame'Asr Hassanil Bolkiah — took up most of my first day, and I wasn't complaining. I went back to Jame'Asr after dark and it was a completely different place: the gold domes lit from below, the courtyard pool turning into a near-perfect mirror, the whole thing glowing against a black sky with no competing light pollution. Worth the second trip.

Food was simple and good. I had ambuyat and grilled fish at a no-fuss spot, and nasi lemak from a waterfront place where you could watch the river go brown and choppy as the tide changed. The Royal Regalia Museum was the unexpected highlight — those gilded ceremonial boats and carriages under cool air-conditioning felt almost unreal, like the sets for a film that hadn't been made yet.