Bandar Seri Begawan Flights

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Once you are out of the customs check and claimed your luggage, just go straight out and there are taxis waiting for you. A taxi trip from airport to Bandar Seri Begawan (about 30 minutes) will cost about $20-25 Brunei Dollars. There are also several car rental booths e.g. Avis and Hertz as well as an information counter next to the car rental booths (you can communicate in English here, no problems). Other than taxis and cars, the purple buses (no. 11, 23, 24, 36, 38 and 57) will get you to the city at $1 Brunei Dollars.

Some hotels can arrange for airport pick-up services, so do check with your hotel so that you can save some money here :)

We took Royal Brunei Airlines from Singapore. They have two daily flights (10.25am and 9.45pm) arriving just 1h 55min later in Bandar Seri Begawan. Return flights are at 7.45am and 7pm. Prices are between SGD 300 and SGD 500, depending on how early you book.

Singapore Airlines has only 5 flights per week and seems to have fixed prices at SGD 460.

Other destinations with direct flights to Brunei are Auckland (BI), Bangkok (BI, TG), Brisbane (BI), Dubai (BI), Ho Chi Minh (BI), Hong Kong (BI), Jakarta (BI), Jeddah (BI), Kota Kinabalu (MH, BI), Kuala Lumpur (MH, BI), Kuching (BI), London (BI, via Dubai), Manila (BI), Perth (BI) and Surabaya (BI).

MH = Malaysia Airlines
BI = Royal Brunei Airlines
TG = Thai Airways

This is all as of May 2009.

Brunei is served by most major airlines...so there's no problem getting there. I took Royal Brunei Airlines...it's actually a code share flight with the Malaysian Airlines. Flight fare...to n fro was MYR1715...that's about USD460++. The 2hrs 15min flight in the economy seat was comfortable.

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Yanks and the Poms dont need visa I think, most of the ASEAN countries dont visas either, but with the exception of some favoured european states, others need visa. Australians can get visa on arrival . I strongly recommend you obtain a multiple entry visa, which costs 30 bnd rather than the usual 20 bnd. remember you may wish to go to labuan or miri and thus dont have to worry about forking out more money or being allowed to come back in to catch your air asia flight to kuala lumpur

I was a bit surprised when they asked me for a departure tax, not that I minded. Have gotten used to richer countries including these things on the tickets, you dont pay extra taxes when leaving singapore or malaysia.. so have some bnd or sgd handy 12 to be exact. singapore dollars are on par with brunei dollars but they dont accept singapore coins.

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The main way of getting to Brunei is by flight and the main carrier is the Royal Brunei Airlines (see website below) which flies to major cities of many continents (e.g. Asia, Europe, Australia). The service of this airline is quite good, and one of the best way is to fly from Singapore to Brunei (about 2 hours, 2 to 3 flights a day). Other airlines include Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways and Malaysia Airlines.

The airport at Brunei is about half an hour drive away from Bandar Seri Begawan (see my airport tips at the transportation section).

You'll need to pay $12 airport tax prior to departure at the airport. It's not included in your air ticket. So make sure you have some cash left for this.

There is a new Serasa Passenger Ferry Terminal that began operations on October 17th, 2009.
The terminal has plenty of ticket counters, an information counter, shops and money changers.

There are 8 ferries that service between Serasa to Labuan, and speedboats that leave when full to Kuala Lawas and Sundar in Sarawak.
The ferry we went on was full, and luggage was just chucked in the front of the boat. I couldn't complain about the trip across, it was very cheap compared to flying.

One thing to remember, is the terminal is about 25ksm from Bandar Seri Begawan

The fare in 2009 is $21

The website gives you a timetable of the crossings.....

http://www.information.gov.bn/bruneidiary_content/boat/Boat_Schedule.html