Advertisement
Published: February 22nd 2011
I never managed to venture out of Dili the whole time I’ve been in East Timor which is not my usual way of travel and I’m excited to be moving on tomorrow. I had to be back in Dili this afternoon so it wasn’t really long enough to go east or south to Mt Ramelau and see more of the country but a little too long to stay entertained in Dili. I was going to go out to Atauro Island but by the time I came up with that plan it was Sunday and there were definitely no boats going out.
As soon as I got to Dili I started to organize my Indonesian visa. I was told I wouldn’t have a chance getting it submitted until Monday since people get there at 5am to line up and get their name on the list and it was already 9 and I still had to find a place that would photocopy my passport for them. I was sent to a place in town (which I found out didn’t do photocopies after standing in some random line for half an hour) which then sent me somewhere else and so on for a
little while. I eventually got that done and spent a good hour trying to find the embassy and walking past it about 3 times. In my defence, every other embassy looks like a palace with huge fences, barbed wire, signs, and flags. The Indonesian embassy is a small concrete block with caged doors and looks more like a public toilet from the outside. After filling out the forms I was sent back into town to get passport photos taken with a red (!?) background and got back half an hour before they close but still managed to get it put through. I also couldn’t pay since the US$ I got in Darwin were older than 2006 so aren’t accepted in Timor but they let me come back in the afternoon to pay so it wasn’t quite the horrible epic people made it out to be.
I’m staying in a backpackers which is great for meeting other people and it means I can boil all my water instead of buying plastic bottles every day. The staff are really friendly and always want to sit and talk. They even invited me and another guy from the hostel to a party out
in some village in the hills on Saturday night (a ceremony for the first anniversary of someones death) but bailed last minute and kind of regret it. Apparently it involved eating half a buffalo (which happened to be defrosting on the front porch in full sun and covered with flies) then a lot of dancing. I hired a bike for 2 days from the hostel and rode to the Pope statue and look out and also to the Jesus statue right on the other end of the bay. The roads are crazy, there’s never a break in the traffic and maybe 2 traffic lights in the whole city so you just have to be aggressive. It is nice once you get a little way out ( to either of the statue on a hill landmarks) though as the traffic thins out. You can walk up to the Jesus statue then find the little path that leads to the Jesus backside beach which is really nice and mostly empty. From there, theres a dirt road you can follow along the coast inhabited only by goats. They are so cute, but a little intimidating and one of the little ones did start
to charge at me. I don’t think they’re very used to people. There’s also lots of white sand beaches all along the road both east and west out of Dili with reefs great for snorkeling and diving but not so great for swimming since its so shallow and the coral starts only a few meters from the shore meaning all you can do is flop down right at the waters edge.
East Timor is expensive! Most food is imported, mainly from Australia so Black and Gold brand things at the supermarket are about 3 times the price they would be in Australia. Luckily local bananas are really cheap since that’s pretty much the only thing I buy. Accomodation is also round the same as in Australia but getting around in taxis and mikrolets is very cheap. Tomorrow morning I get on a bus to Kupang and hopefully onto a boat to Flores the morning after. I will put up a few more photos if I ever find slightly faster internet.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.113s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0443s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb
M.I.A.
non-member comment
the start of the deluge (of comments that is not rain/floods - not a good time to make flood jokes!)
aHIHIHIHI i finally find this famed blog! wow east timor looks beautiful!! your dream place hey - beaches with no people and goats. i did particularly like the view that jesus supplied. and thats awesom that you got to hire a bike and ride around. im interested to hear how you are going on the banana diet - up to 300 per day yet?? also get into the black and gold ginger snaps (i made the mistake of trying the coles brand the other day - horrible no comparison!) hows the weather at the moment - is it hot? did you see benlet in dilli? okey toodles for now xx