Getting around
Getting Around Brunei: Car, Water Taxi and the Bridge
Brunei is compact, well built and easy to find your way around, and the one thing it lacks is the dense, cheap public transport travellers are used to elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The country runs on the private car, so the practical choices come down quickly to hiring one, relying on taxis and a ride-hailing app, or letting a tour operator handle the transfers — with the river and a long bridge across Brunei Bay filling in the rest.
Updated 2026-09-19
Why most visitors hire a car
Roads on the mainland side of the country are good, well signed and lightly used, distances are short, and driving is on the left, which makes a hire car the simplest way to reach anything beyond the capital's walkable centre. Check before you travel whether your licence needs an International Driving Permit alongside it. A network of purple-and-yellow public buses runs from the main terminal in central Bandar Seri Begawan to the suburbs, the airport and the coastal towns, but services are infrequent and finish in the early evening, so they suit a patient day rather than a tight plan. Taxis are few and relatively expensive, and a local ride-hailing app fills much of the gap, with the fare shown before you book.
Water taxis: the river as a street
In the capital the Brunei River is part of the transport network rather than a view. Small outboard water taxis, known as penambang, work the river from the waterfront steps all day, carrying residents of Kampong Ayer to and from the land side and taking visitors across in a couple of minutes for a small cash fare. The same waterfront is where the mangrove wildlife trips leave from, which makes the river the one part of Bandar Seri Begawan where you will never need a car.
The bridge to Temburong
Temburong, Brunei's eastern district, is cut off from the rest of the country by Brunei Bay and by Limbang, a district of Malaysian Sarawak. Since 2020 the Sultan Haji Omar Ali Saifuddien Bridge, about thirty kilometres long, has carried a direct road across the bay, and the drive from the capital to Bangar, the district's main town, takes around an hour without leaving the country. For Ulu Temburong National Park the road is only part of the way: the last stretch is by longboat from the river landing at Batang Duri, and the whole journey is arranged by the licensed operator who runs the visit.
Crossing to Malaysia by road or ferry
All of Brunei's land borders are with Sarawak, and there are four road crossings: Sungai Tujoh in the far west of Belait district, the crossing for Miri; Kuala Lurah in Brunei-Muara, less than an hour from the Sarawak town of Limbang; and two posts in Temburong, Labu and Ujong Jalan, the crossings used by travellers coming from Sabah. By sea, ferries run between the Serasa terminal at Muara and the Malaysian island of Labuan. Every crossing is a full international border with formalities on both sides, and Brunei's E-Arrival Card applies at land and sea posts just as it does at the airport — worth remembering on an overland Borneo route that crosses the border more than once.
Flying in
Brunei International Airport sits a short drive from the centre of the capital, with regional connections across Southeast Asia and beyond. Buses into town run but infrequently, so the realistic options on arrival are a taxi, a ride-hailing car, a transfer arranged by your hotel, or collecting a hire car at the airport — the natural choice for a trip that will depend on one anyway.