The Empire Hotel in Brunei

Empire Hotel and Country Club

Recently Cathie and I visited our daughter, Sara, in Brunei. While there Sara, on a number of occasions, took us to the Empire Hotel and Country Club of which she is a member. I played a couple of games of golf on the hotel golf course with Anthony, Sara’s boyfriend. It is a golf course of dazzling beauty overlooking the South China Sea and will be host to an Asian Tour tournament later this spring.

The Empire Hotel is a strikingly magnificent facility. As you pass the main entrance you enter an expansive lobby with a huge crystal chandelier and marble floors with highly decorative motifs. All of this opens to the seven-story atrium with huge white and gold pillars towering from floor to ceiling. It seemed more of a place of worship than a hotel. This atrium overlooked immaculately manicured gardens, pools and beaches with the South China Sea as the backdrop. I have never been in a hotel of such opulence. What I found particularly odd was that there were very few guests. The three or four times that we used the facilities, I could not help to notice that there was more staff than patrons. Needless to say, the service was excellent.


Empire Hotel Grounds