Brunei Darussalam

Ulu Temburong National Park, located in the heart of a 500-sq-km area of pristine rainforest covering most of southern Temburong, is a highlight of a visit to Brunei. It's odd that a small country such as Brunei should contain such a sizeable chunk of true untamed wilderness. Only about 1 sq km of the park is accessible to tourists, who are only admitted as part of guided-tour packages. To protect it, the rest is off-limits to everyone except scientists, who flock here from around the world. Permitted activities include a canopy walk, some short jungle walks and swimming in the cool mountain waters of Sungai Temburong.

Ulu Temburong's forests are teeming with life, including as many as 400 kinds of butterfly. The best times to spot birds and animals are around sunrise and sunset, but you're much more likely to hear hornbills and Bornean gibbons than to see them.

Cities built on oil money tend to be flashy, ostentatious places, but with the exception of a palace you can't enter most of the time, a couple of enormous mosques and one wedding cake of a hotel, Bandar (as the capital is known, or just BSB) is a very understated place. Urban life pretty much revolves around two pastimes: shopping and eating – there is virtually no nightlife (though an enduring love of karaoke). BSB does have a few good museums and the biggest water village in the world, providing a little slice of vintage Malay life.

BSB's city centre is on the north bank of Sungai Brunei at a spot – 12km upriver from Brunei Bay – that's sheltered from both storms and tsunamis. During the Japanese occupation, the city centre – known until 1970 as Brunei Town – was severely damaged by Allied bombing.

Home to around 30,000 people, Kampong Ayer consists of 42 contiguous stilt villages built along both banks of the Sungai Brunei (Brunei River). A century ago, half of Brunei's Malay population lived here, but life is changing along the river, and many old wooden homes are falling into decay, while smart new, government-built stilt homes are appearing on concrete plinths among the wooden boardwalks. Flag down a water taxi (B$1) and explore for a taste of what Brunei was like before oil changed its fortunes.

Run as a partnership between Borneo Guide and the local Iban community, this blissfully laid-back jungle retreat offers accommodation in ecofriendly riverside tents and cabins, sprawling across a peaceful durian orchard, with guided jungle walks, cooking classes, blowpipe competitions, inner tubing and other activities arranged by Iban villagers. In between, you can sit back in a hammock and watch the Sungai Temburong slide by. Day trips (per person from US$95) here are also possible.

A few kilometres after you enter Belait district (coming from Tutong and BSB), a road – Jalan Labi – branches inland (south) to Labi and beyond, taking you through some prime forest areas. Fully paved, it leads to a number of Iban longhouses. Temburong District aside, this is your best opportunity for cultural immersion, best organised through Borneo Guide; turning up on spec doesn't really work. You can explore the small wetland reserve on your own, though.

The best way to see BSB's water villages and the sultan's fabled palace, Istana Nurul Iman, is to hail a water taxi on the waterfront. Boatmen offer trips along the channels, zipping past the palace's backyard into the mangroves to see proboscis monkeys and crocodiles (best spotted just after sunrise or near sunset, before loud tourist groups scare them off).

Brunei's burgeoning dive scene has the advantage of having some decent dive operators without the downside of crowds.

There are several interesting wrecks – some dating back to WWII – as well as plenty of undamaged reef here, including patches that are largely unexplored. On most of the shipwrecks and all the coral dive sites there is colourful hard and soft coral, such as large gorgonian fans and wide table corals. Marine life you are likely to see includes cuttlefish, octopus, morays, porcupine fish, giant puffers and perhaps a sea snake or two.

The best time to dive is between March and October; from May to mid-July the conditions are often ideal.