Today we will acquaint you with a very unusual country. There are no fields. There are no factories. There are no assembly plants. We haven't seen a single store, a single workshop, or a single store, which nowadays even in Russia have the basement floors of multi-storey buildings. Even people and cars are not on the streets. The area is two and a half times larger than Moscow.
Everywhere - ideal oil roads, oil villas, oil palm trees, giant shopping malls, government buildings, oil palaces and oil mosques. Golf courses and hotels with chandeliers for a million petrodollars. Everything is imported here except oil and chicken. Even perfectly ousted asphalt is imported.
There is no income tax for individuals, on holidays citizens receive gifts, education and medicine are free, and fuel and electricity are cheap. According to Forbes 2017, this country is the fourth richest country in the world. The sultan of this country is the owner of the most unique and most gigantic collection of cars in the world - more than 7000 cars. Sultan actually leads the country and is in one person the Prime Minister, Minister of Finance and Minister of Foreign Affairs. The whole land (as well as oil), as you have already guessed, also belongs to the sultan.
This is Brunei.
One of the richest countries in the world, where people still live in houses on water, a bottle of water costs as 2 liters of gasoline, and 70% of the territory - untouched rain forests. And there are also baobabs - the most expensive trees on the planet. The total area is 5,765 km² 179th place in the world.
Today's Brunei is two scraps of the Borneo coast. They are separated from each other by an area, which stronger neighbors managed to get from the sultanate just before the oil boom. By origin and language, the Bruneians are close to the residents of neighboring Indonesia and Malaysia. And in terms of lifestyle, the country is more like the emirates of the Persian Gulf.
It is a country without income tax and almost without public transport (why - everyone has cars). Luxury state and public buildings are always deserted. They are too big for 400 thousand people.
People love and respect their sultan.
Free education, medicine, mortgage without interest.
About free medicine Hadji specified: even if you need a complicated operation, for example, on the heart, which can be done only in Singapore, the state will pay.
Studying abroad is also sponsored by the state, and the husband/wife and children are paid tickets abroad to visit the family. While his wife was studying in England, Hadji flew to her several times and looked at Europe.
Money for all this is taken from the sale of oil and gas, the country's natural resources.
It is understood that this will not last forever. But as long as all this is there, one should enjoy the privileges of life in Brunei. And what to do then, time will show.
The most advantageous thing is to work in the oil industry.
The ruling sultan Hassanal Bolkiakh Muizaddin Waddaulah is the owner of the most unique and giant collection of cars in the world.
The collection of the sultan - 604 "Rolls-Royce", 574 "Mercedes", 452 "Ferrari", 382 "Bentley", 209 BMW, 179 "Jaguars", 21 Lamborghini, 11 "Aston Martins", etc., is the most unique and most gigantic car collection in the world. The collection is stored in 5 aircraft hangars, where it is served by an army of specialists.
Many of them are not just the rarest specimens, but completely unique, produced under special order only for him.
In particular, the sultan likes to buy bolides that won Formula 1 races.
Most of the cars that the Sultan Bolkiakh has, he does not use and shows few people. He just likes to own them, to realize that they belong to him and to admire them.
His Istana-Nurul-Iman Palace consists of 1788 rooms and halls, the largest of which is listed in the Guinness Book. Baths with gold plumbing and precious inlaid as much as 300.
You can't drink alcohol in public places in Brunei, the punishment is up to 2 years in prison. It is available only in 1 or 2 bars in hotels "for foreigners", as well as in numerous bars on the border with Malaysia, where Bruneians go to "relax"! For adultery - stoning to death, for disrespect for the Prophet by a non-Muslim - the death penalty. All drug operations are also punishable by the death penalty. And, of course, everyone must observe the adopted dress code.
Despite such strict laws, the entire population of Brunei adores the sultan and begs the Almighty that there is no smart man on earth who would invent a substitute for oil and gas. And, of course, no one is going to emigrate from the country. The most terrible punishment for a Bruneian is deprivation of citizenship.
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