Temburong
Brunei is in two pieces. Its eastern district, Temburong, has been cut off from the rest since 1890, when Sarawak’s ruler Charles Brooke took the Limbang valley between them. For 130 years the way across was a boat or a drive through Malaysia; since 2020 a bridge across Brunei Bay has joined them.
Written from cited sourcesLast checked 2 October 2026Suggest a correction
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A sultanate cut in half
Brunei sits on the north coast of Borneo, surrounded on land by the Malaysian state of Sarawak, which also splits it into two pieces of unequal size. The western piece is the larger and holds the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan; the eastern piece is drained by the Temburong river.[1] That eastern piece is the thinly populated district of Temburong, separated from the rest of Brunei by Sarawak’s Limbang district.[2]
Brunei once ruled most of Borneo, but in the 19th century it lost ground: Sarawak to the English adventurer James Brooke from 1841, more land to his family afterwards, the island of Labuan to Britain, and what is now Sabah.[3] In 1890 his successor Charles Brooke took Brunei’s Limbang district, without the sultan’s permission, after some of its chiefs asked for his help against the sultan, and made it a division of Sarawak.[2] Limbang lay between the sultanate’s remaining lands, and Temburong was left on the far side.[2]
The claim and the bridge
Brunei became a British protectorate in 1888 and independent in 1984.[1] It kept claiming Limbang until 2009, when it agreed to drop the claim and Malaysia agreed to give up its claim to disputed oil-rich areas of the South China Sea.[3]
Getting to Temburong still meant a 45-minute boat ride across Brunei Bay, or a two-hour drive through Limbang and four immigration checkpoints. A bridge 26.3 km long across the bay, which cost $1.4 billion and was the biggest project the Brunei government had ever built, opened on 17 March 2020, ahead of schedule, a day after Brunei barred its citizens from leaving the country to contain Covid-19.[4]
Timeline
1841
Sarawak goes
Brunei cedes Sarawak to James Brooke.[3]
1888
Protectorate
Brunei becomes a British protectorate.[1]
1890
Limbang taken
Charles Brooke annexes Limbang, splitting Brunei in two.[2]
19841 January 1984
Independence
Brunei becomes independent, still in two pieces.[3]
2009
Claim dropped
Brunei gives up its claim to Limbang.[3]
202017 March 2020
Temburong Bridge
A bridge across Brunei Bay joins the two parts.[4]
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Sources
- [1]Brunei · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- [2]Bruneians · Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life, via Encyclopedia.com
- [3]Brunei: History · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- [4]Temburong bridge opens to traffic today · The Scoop · 17 March 2020
- [5]Admin 0 – Countries, 1:10m · Natural Earth (via the world-atlas package)
Brunei’s outlines on the map.
Map geometry from Natural Earth via world-atlas. See credits.