Touching Timor

Discovering Dili…..this was a day spent exploring the sights and sounds of the capital city.

(by clicking on the photo itself you should see a slideshow…hopefully!)

To feast the eyes on a cocktail of bright, bold and vivid colours, the Tais market is the place to go…Tais cloth is a form of traditional weaving unique to Timor-Leste.

You see dogs everywhere…..and poultry would rate a close second as being almost everywhere!

I feel like chicken tonight…

…but these cages were ready and waiting for the local cock fights…

It was interesting to note that every so often, the eye would be drawn to buildings that almost looked out of place on the Dili landscape.

…and this park would be the equivalent to Southbank …very modern and well designed.

There was only one place, however, where we saw pedestrian lights….and it looked as though they hadn’t been used for, well, a mighty long time!

A local furniture maker….getting a hand from some young onlookers

Coconut milk anyone?

pretty tasty but too much for us both….

….he was more than willing to relieve us of the drink!

I think this must be the local Sunday School judging by the mural on the wall.

For lunch we had to catch a taxi and travel to the Comoro bridge area as we had been invited for lunch by Rev. Moises. Ended up paying the driver a bit extra as the communication barrier meant that it took a whole lot longer to reach our destination….

Jeannet is involved with raising money to help fund scholarships specifically for orphans through the Groodles Australia Project. She has raised over $100,000 and donated this to the Timor Childrens Fund in which Rev Moises is involved.

To see how Jeannet and the Springfield District Vets are involved, visit
http://www.springfielddistrictvets.com.au/community/groodles/

and more info about the Timor Childrens Fund, visit
http://timorchildren.com/

Watching from a distance….

The evening saw us go out to the beach for dinner….the stalls were packed with meat/seafood and corn on the cob. Oh the choices!!

…and so another day was over

Goodbye Dili…..

So now we were heading inland to the highest mountain Ramelau, which we were going to climb!
The trip was 87 km (and according to Google was going to take 1 hour and 16 minutes…don’t you just love their calculations!)

We were in a convoy of 3 vehicles, and the entire journey, including a couple of stops, took 7 hours.

The plaque on the side of the road overlooking Dili was actually inscribed with a Bible verse….Philippians 1:21 “To live is Christ, and to die is gain”. I would imagine that this refers to the period of Indonesian occupation where it is estimated that one third of East Timor’s population died from military action, starvation and disease.