🇧🇳 Brunei
Bandar Seri Begawan
Bandar Seri Begawan (Jawi: بندر سري بڬاوان — "Glorious Royal City" in Malay, population 100,000 in the capital city proper and 280,000 in the Brunei-Muara district — the capital of Brunei Darussalam, one of the smallest and richest nations on Earth) is the capital of one of the most extraordinary micro-states in Southeast Asia: a country of 5,765 km² (smaller than the US state of Delaware) and 460,000 people (the smallest country by population in Southeast Asia) that has the third-highest GDP per capita in Asia (after Singapore and Japan) and that is governed by Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah (the Sultan of Brunei since 1967: the longest-reigning monarch in Asia and the second-longest-reigning current monarch in the world after King Charles III — no, after the Liechtenstein prince: the Sultan has been the absolute ruler of Brunei for 58 years): the country whose 1984 independence from the United Kingdom was followed by the discovery and exploitation of the offshore oil and gas fields that have made Brunei one of the wealthiest states per capita in the world (the oil reserves are estimated at 1.1 billion barrels, the natural gas reserves at 390 billion cubic meters — the petrodollar wealth has funded the construction of the Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque (the most important mosque in Southeast Asia), the Istana Nurul Iman (the largest residential palace in the world — 1,788 rooms, 257 bathrooms, the palace of the Sultan), and the welfare state (the "Malay Muslim Monarchy" ideology of Brunei known as "MIB" (Melayu Islam Beraja): free education, free healthcare, free housing for civil servants and no income tax for Brunei citizens)). The city sits at the junction of the Brunei River and the Kedayan River, with the historic water village of Kampong Ayer (the "Venice of the East" — the stilt village of 30,000 people built on wooden piles over the Brunei River: the most ancient continuously inhabited settlement in Brunei, with communities living on the water for over 1,000 years) as the most distinctive cultural landscape.