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Published: February 21st 2009
I wrote this blog a day ago, on Friday 20/02/2009, mostly relating to events of the previous day. My leg is healing up nicely, so don't worry. I have to admit, back home I sometimes check SMSes while driving. This is of course illegal; back home. What I do not do, however, is check my SMSes while driving a minibus jam packed with 25 people around hair-pin bends with an almost-vertical 200 m drop and only an intermittent one-foot high guardrail, on a heavily trafficked road barely wide enough for two cars. As a general rule, I would be opposed to that sort of behaviour. Besides, I can SMS blind, which this guy clearly can’t. I can see his eyes in the rear-vision mirror and they’re firmly facing down at the mobile phone.
No-one else seemed to mind though. This is after all the nearest thing to a highway in East Timor. I didn’t think it was a particularly terrible road (I didn’t look queasy and clutch for plastic bags like some of the Timorese), but then, I’ve been to Africa. Even then, as the main road East of Dili, and the only connection between East Timor’s capital city and
Random photo of Dili
I took this because it's the closest thing to McDonalds in East Timorits second-largest city (and its largest, albeit disused, airport) it’s not much chop either. Still, the Madonna on the dashboard and the horseshoe hanging from the rear-vision mirror somehow conspired to get is to Baucau safely. In my years, I’ve learned to be just a little scared of minibus drivers and taxi drivers who have a Madonna or the
shahadah too prominently displayed. I’m all for religious tolerance, but I’d make an exception in the case of minibus drivers, and maybe pilots. Those jobs should be reserved, at the very least, for people who value this life more than the next.
So I got to Bacau, East Timor’s second-largest city. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take any photos from the trip, because the minibus was too cramped. The journey is mainly along the coast, but does go up into the hills a bit. East Timor is a very mountainous country. Much of the scenery looked very Australian, with Eucalyptus trees everywhere. The three-hour, 123-km, trip goes through rather few villages, but like everywhere in SE Asia, there is a lot to see. Mountains, beautiful beaches, a few towns full of piglets, rice fields, water buffalo and their mud puddles
Random photo of Dili
A mural outside the Xanana reading room, a part-museum, part-library celebrating East Timor's current Prime minister, ex-President, ex-guerilla, Xanana Gusmao all over the place, rivers, and ruins. Everywhere there are ruins.
I stayed at “Casa Coures” guest house in between the old and the new cities of Baucau. I came across it by chance, but I was pleasantly surprised. While most rooms were the normal East Timorese prices, they also had some cheap rooms, and breakfast and dinner were included. The good thing about it is that the owner, who claims to speak eleven languages, is really industrious and you can see how much it’s been rebuild from ruins. This is a nice change from the place in Dili which is OK already but doesn’t try any more. So if anyone’s intending to visit Baucau anyway, then I’d recommend this place.
I got there after a rather unappealing lunch. The menu was uninteresting, so I ordered “tortilha”, expecting tortilla, and a fruit juice. The waitress said “no rice?” so on ascertaining that the serves were small, I ordered salad. The salad was good, but the “tortilha” turned out to be an omelette. For this they charged $7.50 (East Timor uses US Dollars, so that’s like $AUS 12). I tried to pay with a $20 note.
“No have. You
Baucau and the cities of Darebin and Yarra
All three levels of Australian government want to get in there with helping East Timor. City of Yarra has taken hundreds or thousands of dollars from my in parking fines over the years, so in a small way I've done my bit for East Timor. have change?”
“No, no change, no-one in this country gives me change!”
“Aiyah!” she said. What the ...?! I thought only Chinese people said “aiyah”
“Well I don’t have any”. I fumbled through the $1 notes she could see in my wallet “I need these for the
mikrolet ”
“OK, I go get change for you”. She went off out the door.
A few minutes later she was back. “No change” she said.
I counted through the $1 notes in my wallet. There was exactly $8, which would leave me with large denomination notes which were fairly useless. Grumbling, I gave her $8.
She pushed it back at me. “$7.50” she said
“I don’t have 50 centavos”, I said
“Aiyoh!!” more exasperated this time
“You don’t have 50 centavos change for me?”
“Aiyoh! No change”.
What does this country do with their change? I understand street vendors who might only have a turn-over of a few dollars a day, but for a place that charges $7 for a basic meal and targets UN and NGO employees, you’d think they’d at least have a 50 cent float.
So after some wandering around, I bumped into the
aforementioned guesthouse. I seemed to be the only one staying there, so after a bit of a siesta I decided to go snorkelling. I wandered out and talked to Josh, the owner of the place. He told me it was too late in the day to get a
mikrolet (about 15:30) but I could charter one. He thought it might be better to go in the morning, but I planned to leave in the morning, and I’d paid $70 for my snorkelling mask in Dili so come hell or high water I was going to use it!
Finally he arranged for one of his “friends” (actually someone who worked for him) to take me down on his scooter, leave me there, and come back an hour later, for $10. It’s a lot of money but in East Timor it’s reasonable. He knew a good place for swimming, he said.
Just before I left, he said:
“Just remember when you go swimming, stay away from the right hand side of the beach. There were a few coconuts there”
I couldn’t have heard that right. His English was fairly good, but heavily accented. I asked him why I should stay
"Hey! Foto!" - 1
There follow heaps of photos of people who insisted I take their photo. It only seemed right to put them up here :-) away from the right hand side - was there a strong current?
“Just a few coconuts, last year, in January. But we got rid of them. Just stay away from the right”
“I aint afraid o’ no steenkin’ coconuts” I thought, or words to that effect. One last try to work out what he meant.
“It’s ok, just a few coconuts, we got rid of them”.
“Got it”, I said, giving up. “Stay away from the right hand side of the beach. Got it”
Even when I saw the sign, I didn’t quite get it, partly because the motorbike helmet still had all the original instructions stuck to the front visor. It was only after David, the guy who gave me a lift on the motorbike, rode away, promising to come back in an hour, and I was waist deep in the water that I worked it out. Ah! Crocodiles! Not coconuts, then.
Actually the snorkelling was terrible. It was a great beach for swimming, but no snorkelling. Still, it was a lovely place, where of course I didn’t bring my camera, a secluded beach, looking up to the cliffs of Baucau, the eucalyptus forest off on one
side, old Portuguese ruins on the beach, and traditional fishermen off on the horizon.
And I didn’t see any crocodiles. I saw a couple of coconuts, but they mainly kept to themselves.
It would have been naive of me to expect him to return in one hour. Whether it’s “Fiji time”, “African time” or “Timor time”, everywhere in the world seems to have a rather cavalier attitude towards time. Or rather, western societies might be overly fussy about time. Anyway, he came back about 90 minutes later. No-one in East Timor seems to wear a watch, but that’s no excuse anymore, because they all seem to have mobile phones.
Anyway, that’s when we had the motorbike accident.
At last count, I weighed about 113 kg. David probably weighs about 40 - 50 kg. This made it pretty hard for him to control the bike. On the way down this wasn’t so much of a problem, but on the way back up the steep windy roads, the motorbike struggled. At one stage, he didn’t change down gears quickly enough, and the bike almost stalled. Down to below walking pace, the bike lurched around the
"Hey! Foto!" - 3
This mother was so pleased to have her photo taken, I feel bad that it didn't focus properly because of the bright 08:00 a.m. sun road, struggling to take off. David put his feet down to steady himself, and we lurched forward, then struggled again. David leant one way to balance it, and I guess I leant the other way, and we were over.
The small grazes on my left knuckle and left knee are no problem at all. My right leg however came into contact with the hot exhaust. A patch about as long as my middle finger had the skin taken off, but not much more, and much of the inside of the leg from about the inside of the knee two-thirds of the way to the ankle is burned. The burn isn’t bad, but I think the skin might come off in parts of it in a few days.
Josh insisted I go to the hospital, where the doctor, the only portly Timorese person I’ve seen, cleaned up the grazes and put some ointment of some description on the burn. He gave me two sets of tablets in tiny paper envelopes, one of which I’m sure is paracetamol, and the other of which looks more useful. Now, about 28 hours later, it’s still a bit sore. I think this is
"Hey! Foto!" - 4
This little old lady looks a lot more serious now, I wish I had got the weird, little-girl-giggles face she did when asking me to take her photo. because my long trousers were rubbing on it too much over the bus ride back, and so I’m airing it, for three reasons: 1) to get sympathy from the girls who work here, 2) because it seems like a good idea, and 3) because I have no other option, since shortly after washing all my other clothes, it began to piss down rain and hasn’t stopped yet, so I only have one pair of short pants to wear.
The local clinic in Baucau was interesting. There was a whole bunch of people hanging around, but I don’t think they were waiting for anything much. A guy was lying on a bed, visible to all, unconscious. I assume he was under anaesthetic, but I didn’t know that people under anaesthetic toss and turn like sleeping people. At one stage he turned over, and about 10 guys jumped forward, and held him down, presumably worried that he’d fall off the table. A while later, when a young guy wearing jeans, T-shirt, sandals and a stethoscope began working on him I saw that he had a gash on his head. As I left, the doctor (I assume he was a doctor, just
not as senior as the fat doctor who’d treated me, since he had a lab coat and pressed trousers) was stitching him up, with a little pool of blood dripping onto the floor.
I think I might have been too harsh on Dili in my previous blog entry. The other day, walking along around dusk, it struck me how it really is quite picturesque. The hubbub isn’t too bad, and the traffic not too terrifying, compared to some other southeast Asian places. The city sits between high, cloud-covered, green hills on one side, and the ocean on the other. Mostly, Autoro island is visible off the coast, in the distance. Much of the city is fairly neat, especially if you stick to the main streets - like everywhere the slums are always going to be messy, Dili just seems to have a higher proportion of slums. The people are incredibly friendly, and I find it hard to believe the stories about them being incorrigible thieves. I could imagine myself living here for a while if it wasn’t so bloody expensive. It’s not just touristy stuff that’s expensive - expats are easily paying $1000 per month (remember that’s
main street
Main street of Baucau on the way down from the new city $US!) rent for an average flat.
I have an ethical dilemma. Is it OK to eat dog? I don't think dogs are any more sentient than pigs, so if I already eat bacon, is it any more wrong to eat dog? If enough people vote, by leaving comments, I'll go with the majority decision, but I need them in the next few days, before I leave Kupang (Indonesia).
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Mark Daly
non-member comment
A vote...
Much as I like dogs (in an owner/pet kind of way) you can't possibly pass up the opportunity to try it if it's on the menu... I've heard the meat isn't that nice though. Glad you survived your accident and nice work on the blog! Travel safe...