Sahur Saturday at the Kontena Park

Sahur Saturday at the Kontena Park

If you haven’t visited the ‘Kontena Park’ since its opening in May this year, their first ‘Sahur Saturday’ event in this year’s month of Ramadan was a great way to acquaint yourself with this novel idea. Definitely inspired by the extremely hip container parks in neighbouring countries, where containers are re-purposed into stalls and grouped together as a ‘container park’ where locals and visitors can go to congregate, dine, shop or simply enjoy themselves.

The ‘Kontena Park’ in Brunei consists of 5 containers and an open-air area outfitted with tables and chairs for customers to dine in. It’s a food and retail market space created in support of micro, small and medium entrepreneurs (MSMEs) by providing them with refurbished shipping containers retrofitted into retail spaces. This initiative by DARe will also act as a testing ground for MSMEs to introduce their products to the public.

It seems fitting that ‘Sahur Saturday’, a Ramadan pop-up bazaar organized by event management company and regular pop-up organizers Big BWN Cookout (who also hosted a ‘Sahur Saturday’ event at the iCentre last year), and who also acts as the operator of the Kontena Park, would be one of the first events to properly introduce the public to the container park concept in Brunei.

‘Sahur Saturday’ took place on 10 June 2017 from 10pm to 2am to a huge crowd of visitors, and saw local vendors taking up a section of the adjacent multi-storey parking lot and also featured activities at the iCentre building, including a Visual Art Exhibit and an Art Jam by Kaleidoscope Studio, a gaming area hosted by New Gen Enterprise, and a Lip Balm workshop by Aloha Nature House Brunei.

But the big draw of the ‘Sahur Saturday’ was the fact that this was a one-stop spot to browse a wide variety of food for their sahur fix. While Sungkai buffets are widely popular in the sultanate, Sahur options are fewer, and this was a novel way for people to satiate their nighttime cravings, and support their local businesses as well.

Vendors at the event include URBN Kitchen, Wings and Drumettes, Baker Blush, The Real HaloHalo, Deli Dimsum, Saffron Café, Signature by MK, Uncle Sam’s Grilled Chicken, Funky Monkey Burgers, Donut O’Clock, DSoul Favour, StickyRice.BN, Burritos Grills BN, The Bambinos, and the seven in-house residents of the Kontena Park: Hybrid BN, Chef Kebab, Big Boi’s Chill and Grill, Ana Memento, Suraya House of Hijab, Butik Delima and Kyna BN.

‘Sahur Saturday’ will take place again this Saturday, 17 June 2017, from 10pm to 2am. It is located behind iCentre at the Anggerek Desa Technology Park in Kampung Anggerek Desa. For updates on more events happening in that area, follow Big BWN Cookout on Instagram and Facebook.

Photos courtesy of Aziz Idris and Shaf Said