Brunei Textile Stores as Tourist Destinations

Yesterday I was invited to open and attend an Islamic finance conference organised by a Malaysian bank. During the break, I had the chance to speak to a few of the bank's executives who flew in from KL the afternoon before and had to fly out again by the afternoon of the conference. So in the short few hours that they had, the ladies executives went out shopping. I have always been proud to point that Malaysian lady officers (and men too) whenever they are in Brunei, they make it a point to shop for textile materials. Apparently Brunei had a reputation among Malaysians at least, that the shops here sell very good value for money textiles especially silk and the good quality textiles. This also included the jong sarat.

However, this particular lady said that she did not find that to be true. She said she was taken to the textile shops both at the Mall and the Yayasan and she only found one piece which she liked. She thought the textiles are expensive and not as cheap as she had heard and she did not apparently like the selection. That sort of floored me a bit because over the last few years, all the feedback I get was that despite the conversion rate, it is still that much cheaper to get all the good materials in Brunei.

I thought at first she did not go to the right places. In the Mall, there would the Nazmi and the Kofom and at Yayasan, there would be a Hong if I am not mistaken and a Nazmi as well. My wife and I worked out the number of places available and we came out with quite a number of areas. We tried to work out the number of textile shops but that was a bit iffy because some of the shops will declare themselves as textile shops but we don't consider them as one as they do sell other things as well. Anyway, the areas are the Kiulap areas (Kofom, SH Himco etc), Batu Satu area (Kofom, Hong, Nazmi, First Metro), Gadong Mall (Nazmi, Kofom), Gadong Outside Mall (Hong etc), Bandar Yayasan (Nazmi, Hong), Bandar Proper (Nazmi etc), Delima Satu (lost count), Batu Bersurat (YMRM) and Sengkurong (Firoz Jaya). There are just too many but to an outsider, it would be difficult for them to know any of the shops outside the Mall and the Yayasan without someone taking them there.

So, what's today's point? I guess there are many textiles shops in Brunei which we can turn to our advantage. We don't have to go to Malaysia or Singapore which we used to go in the 1980s and 1990s which is a good thing. (So, we can buy other things instead of weighing our bags down with textiles.) I wish there was some sort of guide that we can use to give out to the tourists and help people like the bank executives like the one I mentioned earlier. Malaysians ladies are now beginning to realise that our textile shops are like shopping heavens, we have to treat this as a form of tourist attractions. Who knows? If the Malaysians love these, perhaps we can persuade the Koreans, the Japanese, the Chinese who are alaready here and perhaps attract the Middle Eastern tourists to come here. Just a thought.