Blogs from East Timor, Asia - page 5

Our second night in a nunnery was all the peace and tranquility you would expect. The nunnery was on a hill side looking out to sea and we could hear the waves lapping the shoreline. Nuns don't do it tough, the convent was really nice and it even had 3 thatched huts with tables and chairs looking out to sea. We hit the road and followed the coast road back towards Dili until we hit a village called Tibar. There we turned inland and wound our way up the mountains. Some parts of the road were rough from wash outs. A couple of hours later we arrived at a large town called Glenco. Large it may be, but in the guidebook it is not. We bought a couple of bits from the market, but our main ... read more

Having had a rough night because of blaring music until 6:30am we got up and had our breakfast in the convent library. The usual fayre of bread, jam and eggs and very weak tea was served. The walls were lined with English language books and a table facing a flat screen TV, DVD player and stereo. They are certainly well equipped with technology. We packed up our bags and headed out to the road to catch a bus. Sure enough it wasn’t long before one came along. We again got the back seat so windows we could see out of and a reasonable amount of ventilation. With a few puking locals and a rooster we made it back to Dili in 2 ½ hours dropping various bits of firewood and rice on the outskirts of town. ... read more

Thursday is the big market day in Baucau so of course we headed straight there. The market was pretty chaotic, with heaps if buses and mikrolets blocking the road with the roofs loaded right up. Mainly it was veg, flour and grains and kitchen stuff, with shops in tin shacks lining the adjoining streets. Emma bumped into the local crazy man (he really was, Victor showed his photo to a local later that day and that is what he told us). The crazy man asked Emma is she was a girl. It took a while to work out what he was saying, the gesture he was making was an upside down ok, and he had Emma checking her fly and looking at her belly button before she realised that he was asking her if she had ... read more

We decided over dinner that the 3 of us would spend the day exploring Dili. After breakfast we headed out to the Christ statue at the far east of greater Dili. You can see it from the waterfront anywhere in Dili. To get there we hopped in a mikrolet, a micro sized minibus with a bench seat on either side. East Timorese are not big people and you never see a fat one and even they are cramped in, our heads are pretty much on the roof so hunching over is mandatory. The mikrolets usual do a set route at a slow pace picking people up and dropping them off anywhere on route, but it was quiet at that time of morning and for the price we paid we figured that we probably actually chartered the ... read more

It would seem that there are many of you, family and friends, who are under the impression we are on some sort of glorified extended holiday. We are NOT on a holiday! Riding a bike from London to Sydney is more like unpaid work, really. Expensive unpaid work at that. For example, we are very busy every day with planning routes, finding food and accommodation in strange countries, crossing borders, arranging visas, arranging bike shipping, writing blogs even! Well, ok, perhaps not so busy writing blogs as this one is somewhat overdue. Hmmm, so where were we when I last wrote something? Lombok for my birthday… two months ago.Yes, definitely not so busy writing blogs. Turning… older (the nice thing about being old is you can forget how old you are) I would like to sa ... read more