What should a first-time traveler see in Brunei beyond the obvious highlights?

That zero is not a gap in the country's history; it is a statement about how Brunei has chosen to present it. With no inscribed property anywhere in the sultanate, there is no World Heritage trail to follow and no interpretive apparatus built around one. What exists instead is a set of places with firm, documented dates.

Brunei Tourism's heritage guide to the water settlement supplies most of them. The Omar 'Ali Saifuddien Mosque, in the capital, opened to the public in 1958. Two further mosques serve the villages directly — Masjid Pengiran Muda Mahkota and Masjid Pehin Perdana Wangsa Haji Ibrahim. Taman Mahkota Jubli Emas, the golden-jubilee park on the waterfront, opened in October 2017 and covers 12 hectares. Kunyit 7 Lodge was built in the 1920s. Sekolah Melayu Laila Menchanai, the first school in Kampong Ayer, went up in the early 1950s and burned down in 1962. A village mural dates to 1969. And the Raja Isteri Pengiran Anak Hajah Saleha bridge is recorded as Brunei's first cable-stayed bridge.

Read together, those dates describe a 20th-century capital rather than an ancient one — a place whose landmarks are a mosque opening, a school fire and a jubilee park, not a ruin field.

The calendar has one more quirk worth knowing. The International Trade Administration notes that the Ministry of Defence is the only ministry open on Fridays and is closed on Saturdays instead, so the government's week is not uniform even within itself. Banks run 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturdays, while shopping centers stay open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day including Sundays — the one sector that never takes the national day off.

The waterfront park gives the clearest sense of scale: 12 hectares of open ground facing a river settlement on the far bank, so the view from a civic lawn opened in 2017 is of houses on stilts that have stood in the same channel for generations.

The 1962 school fire and the 1920s lodge are the two facts that change how a visitor reads Kampong Ayer. A settlement with a burned-down first school and a surviving century-old timber lodge is a place with building history and loss, not a preserved tableau. Ask about those two sites and the walk stops being a boat tour.

• Sunday — Government offices are closed and banks are shut, but shopping centers run their full 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. day, making it the easiest day for anything commercial.
• Saturday morning — Banks close at 11 a.m., so handle money before then; most ministries are working a normal Saturday.
• Friday — The Ministry of Defence is the exception that proves the rule; plan around prayers rather than around office doors.

None of these sites is governed by an inscription, which also means none publishes a visitor cap, an official opening calendar or a conservation closure schedule you can check in advance. Hours for the smaller village landmarks are not centrally published. Banking is the real constraint on a short trip: an 11 a.m. Saturday close and a full Sunday shutdown leave a narrow window if you need a counter rather than a card.

The eating-out question in this group covers the night markets and Brunei Tourism's own food categories, which is where most of the capital's evening life actually happens.