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!