IT WAS a random social network watch by The Brunei Times, when we stumbled across this heartwarming video featuring one of the sultanate’s famous landscapes, Kampung Ayer on Facebook.

But it wasn’t only the beauty of the famous water village that was captured in video, but an ode to new age discipline, parkour, a sport that encompasses martial arts and sleek gymnastic movements.  

The Brunei Times caught up with Muhammad Abdul Khalid, a 24-year-old recent graduate studying Interior Design  at the Brunei Polytechnic, who produced the video.

He said that he has been making videos for the past three years and during a discussion with friends, contemplated the idea of using Kg Ayer as a location to do parkour training.

Using his trusty Canon 5D Mark III,  Muhammad embarked on a journey to Kg Ayer and completed filming in half a day.

He said that he finally completed the final cut of the video two days after filming.

We just had to ask what was the inspiration behind the video that has garnered so much attention online, with over 7,000 views on YouTube, 600 likes and 500 shares on Facebook.

“The inspiration behind the video was about parkour, the movements, the Brunei culture,” he said in a phone interview.

Muhammad said that him and his friends whom he refers to as Lim and Nazarul Mubin in the video, regularly did parkour training together.

However, this time it was different because they had another participant whom they now call a friend, Jawed El Breni, an actor and stunt-double from France who came to Brunei for a friend’s wedding who wanted to join their parkour training.

“He looked us up and said he wanted to train with us,” he said.

Originally, the aim of the video was to attract the parkour communities around the world, he said, but said that he was happy that the video was shared by many.  

When asked why he picked Kg Ayer as a location for training, he said that aside from wanting to accentuate the sheer beauty of the landmark, he wanted to try something different.

Normally, he said that the parkour training consists of getting from point A to B, from concrete building to another. 

“We wanted something different so we did in Kg Ayer, a place filled with wooden planks,” he said.

And true to parkour style, you can see them running, swinging, vaulting from plank to plank, with little boys from the water village as audiences, even one who successfully attempted to do a risky parkour move!

“When we were there, we had to ask permission from the residents to take the video, and coincidentally the kids were there and they were more than happy to take part,” he reminisced.

So far Muhammad said  that there has been a response for far from the UK and Malaysia.

In the video, you are able to see the stunts they do, jumping from wooden stilt to stilt, a risky endeavor for those who haven’t mastered the parkour art.

“There were no injuries made during the video, because we have been training for a long time.  Some of us have trained for as long as five years,”he said.

The Brunei Times