Part 2: The Tomb of Sultan Syarif Ali

And here we are, we're about to walk to Sultan Syarif Ali's grave. *grin* He's the third Sultan of Brunei and his reign ended in 1433.

Behind Razkil is a resting place, with a couple of tablets that provides some history of the grave and the sultan. I'd love to give you some history regarding him, but I'm afraid I wasn't really paying attention and don't remember my history lessons from grade 4 or so. ^_^;

Here's a closeup of the resting 'hut' with our lovely model Mars. I love all that wood carving. So I admit, I didn't notice the picture wasn't straight. *laughs* Inside, on the left, there are a couple of black tablets stuck on the wall with information of the Sultan whose grave we're about to visit. On the right are benches for resting on.

You can read part of the tablet from the pic. It says Sultan Syarif Ali spread Islam successfully and was the founder of Islamic rule or something. And ah, I'm guessing he was the one who'd built the first mosque in the country.

Of course while Razkil was struggling to read the words, the other two were already pointing out towards this small dome-shaped structure. No, they weren't interested in history, just new places to see. *sigh*

Here's a pic of Razkil with the jawi version of the English tablet. Actually, I'm guessing it's Jawi, which is a writing I can read if it translates to malay. Just that what I'd learned back in primary school didn't have all those accents in place and so the script looks a lot simpler. ^_^;;

And in the distance is the small structure Errand and Ferrahn want us to get to so we can end this trip faster. -_-

All the wood in the resting place is lovely. *grin* So here's a picture of Ferrahn against it, just so he doesn't complain when we're at home that there aren't any decent pics of him. -_-

We're ready to go off! Wheee~! It's a pretty long walk. Well, okay, maybe only a few minutes...but for the lazy bum that is I, it was a long walk. *laughs*

And here, we reach the gates. This whole setting reminds me of a mini royal residence. You have the gates fencing in the istana (or in most people's cases, a very large house in the middle). In this case though, there are no guards, and you can unlock the gates easily and enter. *grin*

At first I was awed. Then the structure appalled me a bit. For instance, you can see that while it's newish, some things are not maintained well...and the fact that they had actually built this supposedly idyllic atmosphere around the grave kind of appalls me. And that green sunroof thingy... It appalls me. -_- It makes me think of bad taste, that they'd tried to compromise modern architecture into something that should have remained untouched and had ruined it in the end. -_-

Not to mention the green roof led to this horrid green tint around the whole place and in pictures. But here's Razkil at the entrance. Right there in the middle of all that green carpeting (carpeting!), is the tombstone.

They'd tiled around the tombstone, and then built around it. There had been graves around this tombstone. And they were just built around as well.

Here's Ferrahn where Mars had placed him and had been taking pictures of him. That's actually something that is supposed to have a bulb in there. *grin* A fancy lamp, I guess. You can see it in the picture where Mars had been waking through.

Actually, he didn't think it was that interesting, but hey, any pics of him are good pics. ^_^;;

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