Long before the wharf had concrete or customs officers, the harbor at Kampong Ayer operated on older rhythms. In the 17th century, the water village hosted a floating market called the padian, where women in distinctive semicircular hats -- saraung bini -- paddled through the stilted neighborhoods in sampans. They sold fruits, vegetables, fish, and kuih, sourcing their inventory from inland farmers and coastal fishermen. The padian was not quaint folklore; it was the commercial engine of a maritime sultanate. Kampong Ayer was one of the largest water settlements in Southeast Asia, and the padian traders kept its economy circulating through channels that no road could reach. Certain stretches of waterfront, like Kampong Lurong Sikuna, doubled as berths for the British schooners that began arriving with increasing regularity. Trade, old and new, all flowed through the same river.

British Resident McArthur formalized what had long been informal. After 1906, ships trading in Brunei paid regulated duties, and a customs office appeared at Kampong Pekan Lama -- a commercial settlement built on a sandbank in the heart of Kampong Ayer, previously known as Kampong Bakut China. By 1908, the Public Works Department allocated funds for a proper customs house and wharf near the padian gathering points. A telephone line connected the customs house to the British Residency by 1910. The infrastructure grew piece by piece: repairs to the wharf and shed in 1916, a new customs house and store completed in 1919, and a fully operational jetty by 1922. That year, the Prince of Wales himself was received at the jetty during a tour of the Brunei River. By the time World War II aerial photographs captured the scene, the wharf stretched 200 feet long, connected to the mainland by three gangways.

Through the 1950s, the wharf hummed with activity. The customs building was completed in Victorian architectural style in 1953, and the site was renamed the Royal Customs and Excise Wharf in 1958. Major shipping companies -- Harrisons and Crosfield, Brunei Lighterage Limited -- managed vessels bearing names like Perak, Lipis, Rajah Brooke, and MV Maimunah. But success carried the seeds of its own obsolescence. As ships grew larger, the shallow Brunei River could not accommodate them. Vessels anchored at Sapo Point in Brunei Bay and transferred cargo to barges for the final leg upriver. The government faced a choice: dredge the river indefinitely or build a deep-water port at Muara. They chose Muara. On 21 February 1972, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened Muara Port, and the old wharf's primary commercial function ended. The river that had made Brunei a trading power for centuries had, quite literally, become too small for the modern economy.

Obsolescence, it turned out, was gradual rather than absolute. Local traders, padian vendors, and water taxis continued using the old dock until the end of 1987. Throughout the 1980s and into the late 1990s, a bustling market for vegetables and seafood occupied the waterfront. Passengers arriving from Labuan and Lawas passed through an immigration checkpoint at the corner of the pier until January 1997, when the Serasa Ferry Terminal in Muara took over that function. Then came the less dignified chapter: the Bandar Seri Begawan Municipal Department converted the Royal Customs and Excise Wharf property into a public parking lot. A waterfront that had received princes and pilgrims was reduced to asphalt and painted lines. It was the kind of practical indignity that befalls historic sites when no one has decided what they should become next.

Someone eventually decided. In 2008, the Brunei government launched the Bandar Seri Begawan Waterfront Construction Project, a B$5.6 million redevelopment completed in three phases by 2011. The former Royal Customs and Excise Building, protected under the Antiquities and Treasure Trove Act since 2006, became a heritage site. Crown Prince Al-Muhtadee Billah officially opened the waterfront on 28 May 2011. On 1 January 2013, a royal decree from Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah gave the site its current name: Dermaga Diraja Bandar Seri Begawan. A golden fountain monument called Mercu Dirgahayu 60, built in 2006 to honor the sultan's 60th birthday, stands where the immigration checkpoint once processed arrivals. Its tall bent column forms the Jawi numeral 60 when illuminated at night. The wharf that once welcomed the world now offers a commanding view of Kampong Ayer, where sampans still move through the water village -- slower now, carrying tourists rather than trade goods, but tracing the same channels the padian women paddled centuries ago.