back to indo tomorrow

i'll be leaving dili at 7am tomorrow morning on a 12hour bus back to kupang. i miss indonesia and its conforts and the food and the crazzy buses and the sweet people and the smells and even that indonesian hit song that drove me mad after the brainwashing session on the 36hour ferry...

meanwhile, it was really nice to hear you on my east timorese number :D thank you!! and i'll give you my indonesian number - it will be working from around 11am my time tomorrow

+62 812 377 241 34

a dizer adeus a dili

trying to say goodbye to dili but it's hard... as i walk the city streets lots of memories from the last days in the mountains in baguia keep on crossing my heart. they were preparing for the "dia dos finados", the day of the dead. they spend 3 days with the family to celebrate. they have a lot of pride in their dead here, they represent freedom, they are the independance of the country and it's not rare to see a framed picture of a man who died during the occupation years put in a little altar inside his fmily's house. the pictures are often in front of a revolutionary flag with a picture of che guevara or other freedom icons. in those 3 days whole villages go up to the big cemiteries and dig up the bones of their family members and take them back home. in baguia i stayed with sra adelaide cabral and sr martinho pinto, the best hosts i can think of as i felt straight away like part of the family. really sweet people! and the mountains are lovely up there, in those hard to reach villages where lots of people has been hidden for so many years. they showed me the hiding places of lots of portuguese people who went there in the time of the indonesian invasion. this things are told with an "oh pa" here and there, with the tone of a portuguese revolutionary :) and it all feels so special...

this country filled up my heart in a really special way! i was here long enough to have lots of strong feelings and i left enough things to see and do that i really feel i want to come back :) all and all... a perfect visit to a very very special part of the world!

this is also as east i will get on this trip. from now on i travel west :)

baguia

cold weather?!

i have been in the sun since april and .... it's TOO MUCH!! i miss the cold! i wish for the day when i can have the joy of wearing long sleaves! puting on a jacket :) being warmed up by a blanket around me :):):) can't wait!

oh boy, what a journey!

this has been quite a trip! today when i got back at the dili's backpackers fabrizio said "you look like a kid coming back from the candy shop"... and that is exactly how i feel :) this place is so special! i have that traveling feeling i have only felt in burma and pakistan and now in east timor :D and here there are even more sides to it because of the connections with portugal, of the happiness of the people to speak my language, of how close i can get to people and how at home i feel immediately and the stories i liten to...

now i just came back from a great massage and decided to stay one more day in dili. not ready to leave yet... there is SO much to digest xx

back in dili

i had one of the most amazing weeks of my life here in east timor :D

am back in dili now and have already been out for indian food (yumm, chapatis!!)and a great pastel de nata & expresso at hotel timor :) the pastel de nata costed 2 USD! totally worth it thought ;) to eat such a divine thing halfway across the world!

from los palos, east in east timor

i am LOOOOOVING this country!!

after i left dili i've been traveling on the back of trucks, inside cramped up minibuses with chickens and kilos of tobacco and old ladies sitting on my lap and kids leaning on my back... also walked with my backpack for many kilmeters, got lifts with a few jeeps and jumped to the back of a pick up truck that brought me to los palos, where i wasn't really going to come to but that was where the ride brought me by sunset and because it was to dark to go on to baguia i decided to stay :) happy i did!

at the guesthouse 27 i met joana, a really nice portuguese girl working at the UN mission who is letting me use the internet illegally at the UN facility ;) this is just after we went to the restaurante roberto carlos where i had caldeirada de peixe!!! the best meal i've had in over a month!! so good :):):):):)

but between dili and los palos there have been quite a few amazing things :D

first i got to baucau. i wasn't too impressed with the place and i wanted to avoid an australian who was almost stalking me... so i walked the 5 kilometers down to wataboo beach and i met senhora teresa who invited me to stay at her house :) and to become colegas (friends). she was the local baker, so we had amazing fresh bread in the morning! and at night we watched awful indonesian soap operas with her kids, and it was wonderful! the next day we went together to the market and i helped her sell the bread for a while (having a foreigner at the local market helps the sales!!).

then i went on to com. got to the junction at desa rasa where i met ngo worker koutiti from uganda :) and after a great chat over coffee on the shade of a beautiful tree we found me a ride - a gentleman who was going to com on official work offered to take me at the back of his motorbike ;) the best way to see the amazing coast! COM WAS GREAT :D i stayed at a lovely guesthouse by the sea where agustina cooked octopus with super mie and rice! across the street lived ricardo lopes with whom i had great conversations while helping him with his english and portuguese :) the com had the sweetest kids i've met in timor leste :):):) they started singing to me "indo eu indo eu para a cidade de viseu"...... this is an old portuguese song thet they sang in a bit of a different version from the one we sing in portugal :D then "o meu chapeu tem tres bicos, tem tres bicos o meu chapeu"...... and many other!!! it was so special!! on my second day in com, xanana gusmao was expected there. but he didn't make it by 7pm or so when it got dark and i went to do some yoga and didn't go to the reception where they had the beautiful girls dancing the beautiful traditional dances.

i got up early the next day to start going to tutuala. walked a gorgeous road for 8kms, got a lift with a truck, walked 5 other ks, another lift, waited at a nice couple's house, got on a bemo and sat on a girl's lap, then walked again and got a truck to the town where xanana gusmao was hidden for a long time during the occupation. then i walked some more under the HOT sun and i got a lift from a fancy and fast pajero!! that's how i reached tutuala beach, in front of jaco island :) i got a bungallow right at the beach and that night at an opening party for the new guesthouse i met xanana gusmao :D he was so nice!! first he offered me cake ;) then a beer :) and then he asked me for a dance! i shook his hand and told him how much i admire him ;) but i didn't dance, i was to shy to dance the tete in front of a hundred east timorese ;) that night i also met major neves, an amazing man who joined the guerrilha when he was 7 and at 44 is still with the timorese army.. he has 22 or 23 bullets in his body and a sweet smile, the kind of smile that i've hardly ever came across. loved meeting him and chatting way into the night.

stayed one more day in tutuala and got a ride at the back of a pick up truck to go all the way to los palos :) los palos looks like a town south of the mexican border... just like its name ;) and for me it offered the chance to enter the world of the UN in east timor and to hear first hand comments from people who are part of this mission that is, like they say, "just like being at summer camp"...

bom dia

walking the streets of dili around 7am is a delight :) some people are sweeping the floor of their homes, others walking to work and to whatever mission they have for the day. and everyone goes 'bom dia' or 'bom dia sinhora' :) and it makes me smile away

i'm headed to the santa cruz cemitery today and then to the new CHEGA! museum. i was 13 when the santa cruz massacre happened and it was the first thing that i remember really shocking me, making me think "what kind of world is this?" and realizing the life i was living in cascais was a small part of the whole thing... i clearly remember walking out of school one day and crossing the street to go to my bus stop and those images on TV where on my mind... and i couldn't really make sense of them...

off to the place where that happened .. .

east timor number

meanwhile if you feel like calling or texting me :)

+6707611523

loving dili :D

what an amazing place! i have dorm bed on the first air-con room on this trip :) and there are some amazing people staying at the dili backpackers! there's also a shower there!! i hadn't seen one since the one and only since i started traveling - at lake toba in sumatra quite a while back now! but the shower is not what's making me the happiest... because the happiness i get from it is nothing compared with the jumping up and down today in the morning when i had pasteis de nata (portuguese custard tart!!) and a bica (expresso) down at hotel timor!! the menu also shows bacalhau com natas, arroz de marisco and other of my favourite meals :) and there is arroz doce for dessert!! yumm, what a paradise after 2 months of nasi campur and mie goreng!!!!!!

the people here are really nice :D and they are really fond of portugal! lots of people walk around with t-shirts of the portuguese team, cristiano ronaldo is a god, buses and trucks have the portuguese flag and stickers saying things like "love of portugal", "portugal in the heart" and such :) and they open up a broad smile when they hear i come from portugal! lots of people speak portuguese :) but tetun and bahasa indonesia are the most spoken languages. the portuguese in dili is simple and has a softer accent, some sort of lighter version of our sometimes harsh portuguese from portugal. everyone calls me "menina" :)

i got to the border of indonesia with east timor on a packed mikrolet (sort of minibus) with a cool driver who at some point screamed at me saying "hey rita, this is for you!", and he played a tape with bryan adam's hits!!! so i made it to east timor singing 'the summer of 69'!!!!! hahaha

today i got all i need to get a new visa for indonesia - quite a bothersome process actually! - which i should get sorted tomorrow. and i'm not sure if i'll leave dili right after that or if i'll stay around for another day... i hadn't been in a city for a long time and it's fun! there are traffic lights here!! hadn't seen those since i left singapore :)

as i head out of dili there won't be internet so i'll have to tell you all about this country on my way back xx can't wait to go explore it!!

proud tan

meanwhile, after being under the scorching indonesian sun for more than 2 months... i got the best sun tan of my life :) even better than when i traveled in vietnam while being photosensitive because of malaria pills! the proof is that yesterday morning while ernest took me on his motorbike yesterday and we went through a village in rote, a lady asked him (while looking at me funny) "where is the boleh - foreigner) from? she is boleh but she is darker, like us..." and i was so proud :D i'm brown! and with all this sun around it was hard to process the info we all got the other day at nemberala - in about 2 months it's xmas!! christmas with a nice tan it will be ;)

kefamenanu

i made it to kefa! it was dark already when i got here so i couldn't really see much, but it looks like a strange place. i got a cheap room at a not all that clean place run by a group of young musicians ;) went out for bakar ikan - grilled fish :) yummy! and met a ducth lady and a japanese man who work at an ngo here fighting leprosy. interesting! they think i'll cross the border and find a job in east timor :) after that one of the guys from my hotel took me on a motorbike tour of kefa... in the dark! so he pointed at places saying where the hospital is, the church, the mosque, the post office, the regent's office and the school... and to me they were all the same, just a dark spot along the road :) after a while he concluded it would be better to do that tomorrow with light ;) and i found this internet place where i get to sit on the floor while typing - i missed old good indonesia after being in safe and clean nemberala for a week!

and from here it's a 6 hour trip o dili!
i'm almost there.... quase quase!! i'm tempted to go tomorrow... will see how it feels in the morning :)

another great book

at the surf camp in nemberala i found a book called 'tuesdays with morrie'. well, the book found me ;) and it brilliantly summed up a lot of what i've learned in the last 3 years! it was great to read things that i feel inside explained in such a clear and simple way :) the book is the result of the conversations of an old student with his university professor when this finds out he has a terminal disease. beautiful! and i recommend it to anyone :)

rote island

i just came back from 6 days in the beautiful island called rote :) have a look at the location of this place on googlemaps... it's so perfect! as south as it gets in indo :) i stayed at the surfer's paradise there, nemberala :D really easy life with a great room, all the meals cooked for us, everyone eating together, good coffee and tea whenever we wanted and coconuts aglore! have been amongst the usual surfing crowd of hawaians, australians, south africans and europeans with high expetations ;) the surf there is GORGEOUS!! and i had a totally relaxing week :) perfect after the loooooooooong ferry trip from sumba that took almost 2 days where i saw a rat going over the head of a lady sleeping next to me!

this part of the world is amazing :)

tomorrow at noon i'll be heading east, getting closer to dili where i have to be on the 19th because that's when my indonesia 60 day visa runs out.

happy in the tropical sun :)

martabak

this is a delicious fried thing that you can usually find on food stalls that show up out of nowhere when it gets dark. and it's delicious!! it's made of a thin dough that is deep fried and takes egg, spices and green onion inside. the whole thing is skillfuly clossed and deep fried for a bit longer on both sides. the result is super yummy and super oily - so it's not something you can have all the time ;) but whenever you do have it... it's worth it!

books

meanwhile i finished reading "l'etranger" in french :D and loved it!! somehow the 4 books i ended up reading on the first half of my trip make a lot of sense together, and at this particular time, while traveling, now. before this book i had read "the blindfold" by siri hustvedt and she did it again... the woman touches me in a really strong way! i love her writing :) reading good books is so amazing!! when you close it after the last page and you look around and the world has changed, you have changed, everything is different and you look back at the pages and wonder... it's words, letter by letter.. and they gain such life, such power, they act so trongly and so sharply and all of the sudden nothing is the same anymore xx

3 hours away from the ferry to timor :)

in one hour i will be taking a motorbike to the harbour in waingapu to get my ticket and hopp on the ferry to kupang. it goes via flores, so the route is waingapu - ende - kupang, and it should take a day and a half :) so i'll be in west timor on sunday!

i might go to the little island called rote just southwest of kupang because it looks so peaceful :) and then i'll start going east to timor leste until i hit dili xx i'm so curious with that part of the world!!

the trip by ferry will be an adventure itself, as they always are :) there is a communal area where entire families and everyone else sits down with all their luggage and also with chicken, goats, cabbages, tabacco and anything else you can think of. that is also where everyone sleeps, on the same ground :) and you have breakfast, lunch and dinner on the same spot. it's quite an event! and i can't wait to board it!

the food

it's time to reflect on food ;) makan, in indonesian :)

indonesian makan is really good!! but very very repetitive! in parts of the country it's fried rice for breakfast lunch and dinner, sometimes without anything but fried onion and chillis added to it! if you're lucky you might get a variation... fried noodles!

then if you are super lucky you get nasi campur. and nasi campur is usually a delight :) it's a plate of rice to which you add a bit of everything - the restaurants or food stals have a variety of bowls with vegetables, fried fish, fried and boiled eggs, tofu, tempe, meat, and always some sort of soup. you point at the ones you like and then enjoy the yummy meal :) in some parts of indonesia this can be really great!! in the poorer areas it's often just rice, a green vegetable and 2 fried eggs. the best nasi campur is in bali where you sometimes have 20 different bowls to choose from :) and you always get toasted peanuts on top :) and prawn chips :)

in sumatra, java and bali the food is really great and there is MUCH more choice! lots of vegetarian options and really different tastes :) in lombok in the touristy places the food was excellent and in the non touristy countryside it was the basic fried fare and somehow close to tetebatu a family managed to feed me 11 eggs in one day!!! (at some point of my life i didn't eat eggs remember?! so that was quite something!)

anyway, everywhere around here it's the kingdom of carbs!! as in the last 3 years i have not been eating much carbs at all... i see this as a way to even things out and find the balance for carbs! i know a certain chinese medicine doctor who'll be very happy to know i'm eating rice and noodles every day now :)

so far, ubud in bali is the place where you can find anything around here - from carrot cake with sugar topping to great sashimi and morning croissants and korean energy juices and spirulina cakes and lasagna and skippy peanut butter and illy coffee and great apple pie... and i have to say i miss it! i have been craving a sandwich for about a month now!! i dream of bread... dark rye bread... and if while in sumatra, java and bali i couldn't face the sight of another pancake... now that i've been in 2 islands where they don't know what pancakes are... i crave them! and somehow i even miss those displays of chocolate bars in british shops... hmm, would love a sneakers bar right now :) i haven't seen one in the whole trip!

i'm actually quite hungry at the moment so i'll stop writing about food and go eat some ;) :) padang makansar it will be!

midpoint

i just came back from rua :) amaziiing place! when i left the internet place last time i walked to the bus terminal to look for the bemo to rua and suddenly i heard 'Rita!' i turned around and the guy from the internet place was driving a car and told me he would drive me there as he likes to travel. ok then, i told amjad, and off we went :)

on the way there there were a few ladies in the jungle wearing nothing but their sarongs and holding babies on their topless chests. the road to rua is gorgeous, passing through many little villages and offering glimpses of some of the tribes that live around here.

when we got to rua and after amjad had bought me water and cookies and coca-cola (which i later gave to some kids as i really don't like it)... i found out that all the info on the lonely planet was outdated (nothing so new in remote areas in this part of the world...). so there was no homestay there. and actually... it made me happy :) it meant i'd be looking for another family to stay with :) i found one with 8 kids that wouldn't leave my room and we went through the whole indonesian-english dictionary ;)

the beach in rua was perfect! and south of there there is nothing :D sumba is so dramatic!! it took 1h15min to walk the whole stretch of sand and today as i walked it in the morning i met a father and a son both wearing their huge tribal knifes around their wastes. after using all my bahasa indonesia with them and running out of things to say, i tried to sit down and write my journal. they got closer to me and stared and stared and went on talking in indonesian. we sat there for about 20min and i think we talked about an amaerican called lucy who once visited rua :) soon after that as i walked in the direction of the harbour a group of 5 fishermen offered me 2 fishes they had just grilled on a fire made with coconut wood. that was lunch :)

suddenly i felt the urge to get back to waikabubak xx got an ojek to the junction and got a truck to drive me back here where i met amjad for dinner :)
today is the midpoint of my trip. 55 days have passed :) and there are 55 days to go!

sumba

this island is amazing :D again, no tourists! and a coastline that is totally breathtaking!

on the boat to waikelo i had the company of 2 very nice men - an old man traveling with his nephew who was coming to sumba for the first time. when we arrived to waikelo we had coffee together and then each of us got an ojek (motorbike taxi) to waitabula. they paid for mine and helped me get a bus to pero, the westernmost point of sumba.

i got to pero and looked for the only official place to stay. the rooms were beautiful but the girl who worked there was not nice... and she wanted 150.000 rupiahs for the room, breakfast, lunch and dinner. i thought that of course i could afford the 10 euros... but it didn't feel nice and it didn't make sense that i would come to a village that feels like the end of the world and pay more then the double of the most expensive room of this trip do far... so i left. i knew there was no other guesthouse... but there's always a nice family ;) so i used my indonesian and told a nice man "saya perlu murah kamar" - i'm looking for a cheap room :) and that took me to a family house with a big courtyard and suddenly i had a cute baby on my arms and a little girl playing with my hair :) they didn't want me to stay because they thought their toilet wasn't good enough for me (i tried to say that was not a problem!) they insisted i'd stay with their cousin who soon arrived and we got on his motorbike to go to his house :) lovely place with mango trees and a monkey as a pet - kiki who was incredibly jealous of me...

the same day after a great shower and amazing fried noodles he took me to the 3 villages that make up the kodi district. on the first one i was invited by the chief of the village to go and live there and not go back to portugal as i should stay and live there. he said he'd offer me animals. i passed and we went on to the next village after watching the ocean for a while.

on the second village, my host's village, we took part in a celebration. someone had died so they were slaughtering one pig and one water buffalo on that person's honor. i had a rush of emotions going through me with the passing of the last minutes before they started to kill the animals. for the pig they got a big spear and they hit him a few times until the animal was contorting with pain and finally fell on the ground and went from very quiet moments to having crazy spasms and then quiet again and lots of blood coming out of his mouth... and making a strange noise. while this happened, just next to it they killed the buffalo. they used a big knife. a strong man went close to the animal and hit him on his big neck. blood came out. the animal shake his big face. the man went to the other side and hit him there twice. blood came out from the sides. the man hit him 5 or 6 more times. lots of blood came out. the animal fell down. and got up again. there was more blood. and the man hit him twice more. blood was coming out of the neck with bubbles, pouring out. the animal fell without any control of his legs making lots of noise. blood and more blood came out and it made a huge puddle of blood. the animal had big and strong spasms at the same time that the pig was moving and getting quiet and making noises. and they lay there dying. i was surrounded by about 30 children. i was greeted by the old people of the village. they were now waiting for the animals to die and each would take a piece of meat home to eat. we left. i sat in the motorbike thinking. mixed feelings. i closed my eyes and felt the curves and the bumps and the sun and the shadow and the air, the smell of papaya tress and coconut trees and a dragonfly hit me. and i felt the place where i am, so close to timor :)

we went on to the last village. i signed the visitors book, made a donation and we went on. this village had a group of people gambling. they were gambling quite a lot of money on a strange game with special dice being thrown by a young kid who was gathering up all the rupiahs that people lost... i had so many young kids around me there... something like what happens if you arrive alone to a little village in tibet :) we went on exploring a more quiet side of the village and we met a convoy of 5 men and 3 children taking a very fat pig and two water buffaloes across a stretch of water to get to another side of the village and offer the animals to the girl that one of their friends fancies :) the pig was lazy and wanted to rest after every 10 steps... so this took forever... we spent about 1 hour with them, the kids playing in the water, the buffaloes bathing, the adults talking under the HOT sun and the pig running back to rest under a shadow. the family of the girls wants 15 animals so it will take a while until the boy can get the girl - these were the first 3. the brother of the guy who offered the animals took my hand and he wouldn't let go. i needed help to get free from it. and we went on. back to the motorbike and on to visit a friend. lovely family.

so much had happened in a day. i went to the beach to watch the sunset. kilometers and kilometers of some of the most beautiful coastline i've ever seen. i hit my left big toe on some dry reef. a chunk of meat got separate from the rest of the toe and lots of blood came out. i went on walking and the blood made the sand light red. i washed it in the ocean and sat there looking at the waves and to the horizon behind the waves. there's no land after pero until you reach africa. the north of madagaskar or tanzania xx

now i'm in waikabubak just for the ATM, the post office and the internet. on my way to rua, on the southern coast of sumba :)

soon i'll be taking the ferry to timor!

thanks :)

just a quick message to thank you for worrying and sending me your positive energy by phone, email, smoke signs and those invisible waves of friendship and love :) you're the best! and with you all around the world caring, how can anything bad happen?!

sumbawa & the earthquake in sumatra

i was at the bus station in bima, sumbawa, sleeping on a stopped bus around midnight when i heard about the earthquake through my sister in the algarve! that day i had left lombok in the early morning and when i arrived in sumbawa i got on a bus decided to cross the island and get on a boat to sumba because they only go twice a week and i didn't want to get stuck in hot and dry sumbawa. my bus only went as far as bima and it was run by a really nice group of guys :) one old man and 2 teenagers - all of the fans of Figo ;) the old man told me to sleep on his bus until we'd leave for sape at 4am. it sounded crazy to me... but i did as he said. was setting the alarm clock on my phone when i heard it ringing (wow, hadn't heard that sound for ages!!). it was catarina with news from sumatra. i was fine, as sumbawa is really far from sumatra. but i'm really worried with many of the people i met in that beautiful island! funnily enough... if i had gone to mentawai where i wanted to meet the tribe and make the mythical tattoo... i would have been right at the center of the big mess xx news of the earthquake only reached sumbawa the next day and people were devastated... the only thing that made people smile was the relief of not having a tsunami following the earthquake. then things slowly got back to normal.. as they're so used to the earth shaking around here. i was a bit worried with taking the overnight boat and n was great in finding out the last updates for the tsunami report and all that by sms (obrigada n!) but it turned out the boat would only leave the following day at 10pm. so i was stuck in sape, sumbawa for a whole day and 20 hours! and it turned out to be GREAT :)
sape is a super dry and desolate harbour city without any tourists or tourist sights and it's filled with nice people with great smiles who are happy to just chat with you and talk about the world in general, politics and love and education and the riches of each country and religion and the weather and football and music and anything else :) i enjoyed the time in sape :) and then got on the night boat to sumba xx