Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
Living Between Two Worlds: Coming “Home” to Brunei on Semester Break
When my parents moved to Brunei for my father’s diplomatic posting, I didn’t go with them.
Instead of unpacking a new life in a quiet, tropical country, I unpacked textbooks in a cramped university dorm room elsewhere— chasing a degree, chasing a future, while my family’s story kept unfolding without me, thousands of kilometers away.
Brunei became the place I only knew in fragments: short visits squeezed into semester breaks, video calls where the Wi-Fi froze, photos sent on WhatsApp of sunsets over water that I wasn’t there to see.
This is what it felt like to live between those two worlds: university life on one side, and the diplomat-family chapter in Brunei that I only got to step into on holidays.
Watching a New Posting From the Outside
Growing up, new postings meant new everything: schools, friends, houses, routines. We moved together, a unit. When my dad got posted to Brunei, for the first time, we didn’t.
I was already in university by then. There was no easy way to transfer, no guarantee another school would accept all my credits, no desire to lose the progress I’d fought for. So I stayed. I watched my family move on to a new country the way I used to—except this time from a distance.
I remember:
- Getting the first photos: a green landscape, wide roads, calm water, a surprisingly quiet capital.
- Trying to imagine the heat when I was walking across a cold, gray campus.
- Hearing stories about embassy life, local food, and new routines—all in a place that was technically “home,” but not really mine.
There was pride in carving my own path at university. But there was also a quiet ache: for the first time, a chapter of my family’s life was happening without me fully in it.
Semester Break: Landing in a Life That’s Not Quite Mine
Flying to Brunei during semester break felt surreal.
I’d walk out of the airport into thick, warm air and palm trees, my body still wired to the pace of lectures, assignments, and group projects. Suddenly, the only deadlines in front of me were family meal times and embassy events.
Brunei’s pace was calm—shockingly calm—especially compared to university life. No rushing between classes, no late library nights, no endless “we should catch up” messages that never turned into actual plans.
Daily life there felt like this:
- Slow drives on wide, quiet roads
- Simple routines: breakfast at home, walks by the water, small grocery trips
- Evenings with my parents, talking without the time pressure of a quick call
It was peaceful, and I loved that. But beneath the peace was an odd sense of dislocation. Every time I came, it felt like I was stepping into a movie that had started without me. The house had habits and little inside jokes I hadn’t been there to form.
There was “their life in Brunei,” and then there was me, visiting.
Two Clocks, Two Realities
Being in Brunei on break never let me fully forget I had another life waiting.
Even as I:
- Sat in the living room in comfy clothes,
- Helped set the table for dinner,
- Joined my parents on quiet weekend drives,
I knew there were emails piling up in my inbox, syllabi I’d need to re-read, deadlines waiting for me the moment I landed back at university.
Time moved differently in Brunei:
- Mornings lingered.
- Afternoons felt unhurried.
- Nights were calm, more about conversation than cramming.
Meanwhile, my friends were:
- Doing internships
- Working part-time jobs
- Going on trips together
- Stressing about upcoming exams
I was both lucky and out of sync: resting in a peaceful place that felt far removed from the hustle I’d jump back into soon. It sometimes felt like I had one foot on soft grass and the other still running on concrete.
The Strange Guilt of Rest
There was a quiet, surprising guilt that came with being in Brunei on break.
On one hand, I knew I’d earned the rest. After weeks of exam prep, group projects that dragged late into the night, and the constant pressure of grades and future plans, I needed to breathe. Brunei offered that in abundance.
On the other hand:
- I felt like I should be using my break “productively” like my classmates were.
- I felt like an outsider in my own family’s daily rhythm.
- I worried that by choosing my degree, I’d chosen out of being fully present with them.
Rest didn’t always feel restful. It felt like pressing pause in a world that didn’t stop for anyone.
Some evenings, sitting on the porch or by the water, I’d feel a knot in my chest—grateful to be there, anxious about leaving again, and aware that I couldn’t fully belong to either world, at least not at the same time.
Visits in Fast-Forward
Because my time in Brunei was limited to semester breaks, everything there felt like fast-forward.
- “You have to try this restaurant before you go.”
- “We’ll show you this spot next weekend—oh wait, that’s your last weekend here.”
- “We should visit this town, this mosque, this beach… if we can fit it in.”
My parents wanted to share the best of Brunei with me. I wanted to understand the place that had become their life. But the calendar always loomed. Breaks are never as long as they look on paper.
So my memories of Brunei are snapshots:
- The calm of water villages against a darkening sky.
- A quiet mosque lit up at night.
- The softness of the air at dusk.
- Supermarkets that closed early, streets that weren’t crowded, an almost unreal sense of safety and stillness.
Then, just as I started to sink into that rhythm, it was time to pack up again.
Airport Goodbyes, Again and Again
Diplomat kids know airport goodbyes too well. But this was a new kind.
When I was younger, we left together. Now, I’d be the one wheeling my suitcase through departures while my parents stood on the other side of security, waving.
- They stayed in Brunei.
- I went back to exams, assignments, and a dorm room that never felt as restful as the bedroom they’d kept ready for me.
Each time I left, I felt torn:
- Guilty for leaving them again.
- Guilty for even thinking of staying longer, because I knew what was waiting back at university.
- Proud of myself for staying committed to my degree.
- Sad that commitment meant missing a whole chapter of their lives.
On the plane, somewhere between Brunei’s quiet and campus noise, I’d replay conversations with my parents and wonder how many more breaks I’d get before their posting ended.
The Weight and Gift of Choosing My Own Path
Not following my diplomat father to Brunei full-time was, in many ways, the first major decision that put my own path above our family’s pattern.
It came with:
- The weight of distance—of knowing I couldn’t just drop by for dinner or show up to embassy events.
- The ache of missing small, silly family moments that never make it into phone calls.
- The knowledge that my younger siblings or my parents’ colleagues would have memories of Brunei I’d never fully share.
But it also came with:
- The satisfaction of pushing through semesters when quitting or transferring would’ve been easier.
- The growth that comes from managing your own life for real—rent, deadlines, mental health, all of it.
- The slow realization that loving your family sometimes means not following them everywhere.
Brunei taught me something without me fully living there: that growing up as a diplomat kid doesn’t mean you always pack your bags and go. Sometimes growing up means staying, even when your heart wants to board every flight.
What Brunei Means to Me Now
I’ll never know Brunei the way my parents do. I don’t have years of routines layered onto its streets, or long strings of memories tied to its seasons.
What I do have is something quieter:
- A handful of sunny, slow-motion breaks that felt like breathing after holding my lungs tight through exam season.
- The feeling of stepping into a house that wasn’t quite “ours” to me yet—but where my family’s laughter made it home.
- A deeper understanding of what it means to live between two worlds: emotionally in one place, physically in another.
Brunei, for me, is not just a country. It’s a symbol:
Of the first time my life didn’t revolve entirely around my father’s posting.
Of the moment when our paths, while still deeply connected, no longer moved in perfect sync.
Of the complicated, sometimes painful, always necessary process of becoming my own person.
When I think of Brunei now, I think of quiet roads, warm evenings, and the feeling of being both guest and daughter under the same roof. I think of the tension between wanting to stay and needing to leave. I think of a version of my life I sometimes wonder about—but don’t regret giving up.
Because in the end, Brunei is where I learned that I could love my family deeply, miss them fiercely, and still choose to stay planted in the life I was building for myself.
And that lesson, as hard as it was, might be the most important thing I carried away from those semester breaks—more than any postcard, photo, or souvenir ever could.