That being said, having a good grasp on the language was really helpful as there weren't very many English speaking locals. I think the local people really appreciated it as well, as everyone who goes over there doesn't attempt Tetun, and just goes with Bahasa Indonesian which is also widely spoken. A lot of people were surprised, and glad to see a Malai (tourist) speaking to them. Hopefully an omen of better things to come in the country.
The country is breathtaking, it has massive mountain peaks (The highest mountain in Timor is over 700 metres higher than mt Kosciuszko), and beautiful water, with big deep drop offs right next to shore giving it some excellent diving.
The people are really nice and very proud of their independence (as they should be after earning it). And the history of Timor is really interesting, especially from the Timorese perspective.
All in all, this holiday was everything Bali wasn't for us, the people here are real people and you never get the feeling they are trying to get money out of you. We also felt safe the entire time we were there, which was something I couldn't say for Bali.
To start with we stayed at the 'Sands Motel' for most of our stay in Dili, which was recommended by my workmate. It was fairly run down (top end accomodation is not available/affordable if you visit Timor), but it was a nice family run motel and was clean and cheap, and it was nice to support a local family while we were there.
On the first day we went to the christo rei statue (A large bronze christ statue off Dili's eastern headland). We walked to the top and took in the sights, which were amazing and then went snorkelling around the back of the headland. We saw a few interesting creatures, a spanish dancer, and about 4 turtles which was cool.
Me taking a photo of the spanish dancer
One of Dili's main streets. You can see the mountains surrounding the town from anywhere in the city
The Chriso Rei Statue from a prayer area almost at the top. The statue doesn't look very big in this photo but it's pretty big up the top of the headland
A Hotted up Taxi near the Christo Rei Headland. Timorese love to do up their cars with ridiculous crap, they are all covered in flashing lights and have glow lamps under them or there are massive spoilers on piece of crap cars, or even vans and buses. It's pretty funny the things they do..
One of the many buses covered in beautiful women or other random artworks. Notice the scooter just tied on to the back for the trip.
After Christo Rei, we headed to the Arte Moris art gallery and housing for young artists. It was a pretty cool place, we had to cut it a little shorter than we would have liked as the grounds were teaming with mosquitoes and we had forgotten to put on repellent. (Normally we wouldn't care, but dengue and malaria are pretty prevalent in Timor so we decided to play it safe).
A Giant Kettle made of Thongs
Probably one of the best things about Timor is the artwork, there are a few galleries around Dili and the art is really cool, there's a very young population in Timor (Due to both death, and people fleeing the country, and those remaining trying to madly repopulate) and this shows in a lot of ways in the city, art being no exception.
After that I can't really remember what we got up to, so here's some more random photo's:
Markets- The chickens rooting around at the bottom of this photo were pretty sneaky, and would jump up and peck the overhanging lettuce whenever the stall manager wasn't looking.
The going rate for semen in Timor is a lot less than what they charge in IVF clinics around Australia.
After spending a bit of time in Dili we headed over to Atauro island, an island about 30ish K's north of Dili which is completely different to Timor's largest city.
We stayed at 'Barry's Eco Lodge' It was beautiful, and Barry and his family were really nice people. We had a great time there with Barry (An Australian man who has built this eco lodge from the ground up with his Timorese family), and the guests at the lodge.
The cost was extremely cheap, for $30 a day you get a cabin about 4 metres from the water, and three meals a day. (Which were really good meals). As a result we spent ages out here, it was perfect.
We spent most days snorkelling the reef outside our bungalow or checking out the east coast of the island (we never made it to the west coast or the hills, but we'll save that for another time).
The nights we spent drinking beer and shooting the breeze. We had some interesting conversations with Barry and his friend Kim and the guests about Timor and the local people. From staying here we learned;
Timor is pretty much 100% either catholic or protestant (I think 5% are Muslim maybe), they don't get any TV except for indonesian TV (which is all muslim friendly) so they aren't exposed to much sex or naked flesh. No Timorese women ever wear bikini's, or dress like other women do (they are very conservative) so when the Tour de Timor came over a lot of the female bike riders were getting groped as they rode by.
Barry said he even had someone masturbating in the bushes next to the eco lodge when some of his guests went down to the beach in bikini's.
All in all, I guess this reaction is to be expected when people aren't used to seeing girls exposed at all. The Timorese attitude to women isn't as modern as it is in Australia though. Apparently it goes as far as instead of punishing a man for raping a woman, the local community instead tries to get the two of them married (I guess so it's ok in gods eyes or something).
There were also a group of Fred Hollow's eye doctors staying at the resort. After working in a hospital all day the last place I want to be on my holiday is hanging out with a bunch of doctor's and their ego's.. But they actually came in handy after I burst a blood vessel in my eye and was afraid to keep free diving without a thumbs up from an eye specialist.
They had some interesting encounters. For some reason in third world countries people get cataracts really early in their lives (at like 30 and below)(maybe from malnutrition..?) and having no medical attention available they get real bad. So the doctors were talking about one person they got in their clinic who got their vision back and was shocked that they had been operated on by white Malai's and not Timorese people.
All in all though they were heaps annoying though.
What was nice was that the Fred Hollow's jerks and Barry and other people we met all seemed to have a pretty optimistic view of peace being retained after the UN withdraws (which is happening in like 6 months). If you talk to some AJ's though they are sure that Anarchy will erupt once them and the UN leave. But that is just because they think the world revolves around them. (We did meet one really nice AJ on our trip who had no doubt Timor would be fine once they left).
What was also interesting was the views of Barry and his friend on the UN. Although they supported independence, Timor was also a very innocent country before they came in, and with the UN came prostitution and drugs. AIDS also was virtually unheard of in Timor before the UN came in (I don't think it's very prevalent yet still, but with a predominantly catholic religion it will probably spread more than in other countries)
Algae Eaters
Butterfly fish - They almost always travel around as a pair
The view from our bungalow
Fish living in coral
Cutest Dogs EVER outside of Dili - The dogs of Timor are all pretty happy, which I take as a sign of a good country. The place has a good vibe
Dynamite destruction of the coral reef outside Barry's. Barry claims that no dynamite fishing has occurred since the Indonesian occupation in Timor, but this damage looks too recent in my opinion. I'm not an expert though
Very sneaky crayfish. I almost caught this guy, but he was too quick
A very picturesque church in Villa on Atauro island
Barry's eco lodge
A coconut lady at the markets. She was selling these for 50c each (a lot less than our rate of $3.00). When paying I thought it was $1.00 each for the coconuts and gave her $2.00, but she explained that it was $1.00 altogether and returned the other dollar. That doesn't seem like it's very important, but that happened a few times in Timor, but strangely I never had the experience of someone telling me I had given them too much money when we went to Bali..
Boneca's in Atauro - This is a womans collective who spend their days sewing little dolls and bags (which are really nicely made) they sell for $7 - $12 each. We spent about $40 in the shop and they were shocked. The minimum daily wage in Timor is $5 a day, so I guess that is a pretty significant amount of money to them.
After spending too much time on Atauro we headed back to Dili via the Nakroma ferry (for just $5) to hire a motorbike and travel up the Eastern coastline. What we didn't realise though is that everything shuts on a Sunday as everyone is in church, and so we couldn't hire the moto, or do anything really. We did a bit of shopping this day though and bought like $140 worth of Tais (handwoven blanket/rugs) they were a real bargain for the work put into them. Each Tai is about $20, and takes around a week to make. It was good to support these people too. (They looked pretty poor).
A Woman weaving a Tai. It looks SO time consuming when you see them doing it
The Tais markets (Tais Hovels)
This is a crazy man on Dili's streets. I wasn't game to talk to him but the only tourist we encountered on our trip (a stripper from Darwin) told us that he apparently was rich prior to Timor becoming independent (purportedly a millionare), then once the country became independent he lost all his property to the government somehow, and now he can't leave the country (he is Australian) because he will lose his court case if he leaves the country. This explains all the anti UN slogans on his sign. I'm not sure if this guy or the stripper girl was crazier in the end, she was pretty weird aswell...
After waiting out the Sunday we managed to hire a moto and head up into the mountains. Before heading out though we went to the 'CHEGA!' exhibition on human rights and the history of Timor. It was pretty cool. But almost impossible to find, it is acually in a building labelled CAVR if you're ever going over there, and none of the locals know what CHEGA is, but will tell you where CAVR is no problem. (Thank you lonely planet guide for naming the place Chega...)
Chega was very cool, it gives you a really good perspective of the history of Timor which you won't be able to find online. I won't go into Timor's history though, even though it is fascinating.
We also went to the woman's collective store called the Alola foundation which had some nice bags and junk in it.
When we left Dili it was heaps hot. We couldn't get over how much warmer it was in Dili than Darwin. Darwin has had a real cold snap lately (getting as low as 17 degrees!) but Dili wasn't experiencing it at all. It was even raining in the evenings, which stopped happening in Darwin about a month ago. I thought that was weird, seeing as there's only like 200K's between the two places.
Anyway after riding into the mountains for about 15 minutes it cot VERY cold. It felt exactly like the blue mountains at home, and with the similar eucalypts and plants it was a very strange experience riding through little towns with thatched asian roofs in Australianesque woodlands in cold weather. It was very cool. The people in the mountains were hilarious aswell, I don't think they get many Malai's up there. The kids were so funny, they'd all hold their hands out and get high fives as you rode past. Best place ever. I wish we had more time to have gone further afield.
We were going to head into a town called Maubisse which we were told is incredible about 60K's south of Dili. This turned out to be impossible in a day. After 20K's of riding more or less straight up the mountain we headed into some huge clouds and then it started raining, which got worse as we went further into the mountains. The roads were pretty bad (but fun to ride on) and it was slow going and we were getting wet and cold. After about an hour we pulled over and asked some people how far it was to Maubisse and they said we had another 50K's to go... So we headed back. It was amazing when we got back, it was about 35 degrees again as soon as we got back down the mountain. I've never experienced anything like it.
Bad photo of me on the moto
Severely branded cow
Dudes on ute
Graffiti / Mural
Pretty much exactly what happened when the Indonesian forces were forced to leave Timor after the Timorese voted in favor for independence (78.5% voting for independence). Really the only reason Indonesia agreed to a vote was because they were in the midst of the asian financial crisis and could not afford to continue occupying Timor anymore (pretty much the same as when Portugal left). After leaving they destroyed EVERYTHING.
Surprisingly the pedestal of this statue was not destroyed by the indonesian military when they were pulling out of Timor. Because it remained intact the Timorese put this statue on top of it of a traditional Timorese warrior breaking the bonds of Indonesian occupation.
This was a cool guy. Before I got this photo he had three real big groupers which he sold to a passing car. His speargun is handmade from wood and he uses old bike inner tubes to power the spear. He has no snorkel and only speedo goggles. Some guys don't even have plastic goggles and have to make their own out of glass wood and resin. This is real spearfishing. There were some impressively big guns around Timor. Probably why all the big pelagics were so flighty while we were freediving.
After the mountains we spent the next day travelling the west coastline on the moto. It was a really bad road along this way and was way fun to ride. In some spots you had to tightrope ride across strips of tarmac 10cm wide where the road is caved away at both sides, and you were constantly doing tight corners trying to weave around the thousands of potholes along the road. The views along the coast were amazing as well. It was a great day.
We ended up going out to a town called Maubara for lunch in an old portugese fort and some diving on the reefs across the road. It was a fantastic day.
Some construction workers blocking the road from Maubara. I've never seen a concrete power line being erected by hand. The Timorese people are little dudes but they are pretty tough. These were pretty flamboyant construction workers though, nothing like what we get in Australia
Salt Mines on the road to Maubara
Kids' favorite toy was normally a tyre and a plastic bottle.
I guess thats everything. We headed back to Australia after Maubara. It's hard to summarise a trip like this. We had a great time though. I can't wait to go back.
As far as Lemon news is concerned we tried to head out to Gunlam falls yesterday and made it about 3/4 of the way there until we stopped for lunch. when we tried to start the bus again the battery was flat.
That didn't matter too much, I've come to expect this from the bus, but the timing was awful, Gunlam falls looked really nice and we were so close... We had to start the bus off the deep cycles and head back home all the while the voltage in the bus was dropping (it got down to 8 volts, I can not believe the engine was still running).
Anyway, it was my fault this time (as usual) I had disconnected a crucial wire on the alternator in my search for the non-existent short circuit, and we had traveled the whole way on battery power alone. We're always learning from this vehicle, I sort of assumed the alternator was working because if the battery was drained to the point of not starting the engine I wouldn't have thought it was enough charge to keep the engine running, so I thought at the time a short somewhere was heavily draining power from the vehicle.
It's a real shame, because we could have fixed this one on the spot if we'd spent the time, but we just assumed the worst.
I guess the good news now though is the bus is now in top shape (electrically anyway)(the bearings are squeaking again though...).
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