Blogs from Timor, Indonesia, Asia - page 2

After a long but pretty comfortable 20 hour ferry ride I was in Kupang, Timor, just north West Austrailia. Another 5 hours on a ferry and bemo and I was on the east side of Rote, just off the coast of Timor. Nembrala, Rote is the home of T-Land another one of Indonesia's epic surf breaks. T-Land is billed as the easier G-Land (*surfer knowledge*). It is a long long left point with a few other breaks nearby. I have finally found paradise. Ive been told that Nembrala is like Hawaii in the 60's. A single paved road runs through town lined with stacked coral fences. The town sits beneath the swaying shadows of coconut trees. The 4 hotels in town are scattered throughout thatched huts and concrete block houses. Goats, pigs and dogs roam the ... read more

Gunung Mutis is FANTASTIC!!! Getting there was a bit of a laugh though. First was a three hour bus trip from Kupang to Soe which wasn't bad because the bus was only half-full (the buses aren't really buses either, they're like bigger versions of mini-vans). Then a quick motorbike ride to where the bemos to Kapan leave from. I had been given to understand that I had to take a bemo half-an-hour to Kapan and then another bemo another half-an-hour to Fatumenasi where I would be trying to track down what was described on the internet as a "basic losmen" owned by Mateos Anin (yes the same internet source that called the delightful Mamariwu House a basic losmen too, so I wasn't worried). A bemo is a small mini-van in which instead of having rows of ... read more

The first paragraph is for computer people only. Non-nerds can safely skip to the next paragraph. OK. There seems to be only one public Internet connection in this whole city, and that’s at what passes for the tourist hang-out place. The only way to get on is to use their one computer, or unplug their one Ethernet cable and hardcode your IP address to his 10. address and set your DNS servers. He doesn’t seem to have a switch or a router or anything, just an Ethernet cable which as far as he knows magically comes from his ISP. It gives very intermittent connectivity to the Internet, slowing right down often, so that lots of webpages don’t even load for me. So I haven’t been doing much in Kupang, but I thought I should write a ... read more

Today we are leaving Kupang to travel in Indonesia before returning home to the UK on Decemeber 12th. It is with mixed feelings we leave - so sad to say farewell to some great people, relieved to get away from the heat and noise, satisfied (even smug) about what we have achieved , amazed at what people can and will achieve when given the opportunities, intrigued by the resourcefullness of people when there are no 'health and safety regs' to inhibit enterprise. We will miss the smiles and endless greetings of 'Hello Mister', the friendly interchanges (assumed) , being stroked by strangers who just want to feel the skin, Any way a few photos gives a better impression than my ramblings. Just a small selction form my collection of 265,765. This is the last blog from ... read more

The saga of the Kupang ear. November blog For me this month has been dominated by an ongoing ear infection. For Colin it has been a very productive month working with the suppliers to install the new hospital computer system - all is looking good with the project at the moment. You may chose not to bother reading the rest of this self pitying, whining blog entry which is all about me and my ear The saga began 4 weeks ago when I went for a celebratory swim on the Friday afternoon of the final day of teaching my 5 week ICT course, this was at the pool of Hotel Krystal, by Kupang standards a 4 star hotel by European standards - fairly dire. The next day I swam in the private pool of an Australian ... read more