The taxis here in Dili usually sport a windscreen banner such as ‘Tomboy’, ‘Remember’ and ‘White Zombie’, to name but a few. The banners obscure all but a strip of windscreen which they peer out of and dangly things such as religious ornaments and cuddly toys usually adorn their mirrors. There doesn’t seem to be any regulations concerning taxi roadworthiness, they all travel at 25km per hour and as long as their horn works any fare is fair game. Taxi fares before the crisis were $1 but went up to $2 around town. However, Joey got in a cab that broke down 3 times on the way to his destination and to his horror he realised the taxi driver didn’t have any brakes. This fact he gathered when he saw the driver (rapidly approaching parked traffic) desperately pumping the brakes, then yanking the handbrake and as a last ditch attempt, sticking his foot out of the drivers side door and dragging his flip-flop along the ground. After an hour of gritted teeth on this precarious journey, the cab driver had the audacity to try and charge him $3! Unfortunately this one wasn’t sporting a banner, so we would know which one to avoid.
We have had a series of unofficial roadblocks around town outside the nativity scenes. The locals put rocks in the road to slow down the traffic, effectively making some two way roads single lane. I don’t blame them as there has been so much rain recently, you don’t want the UN haring through puddles and soaking baby Jesus or in the case of the one outside the Australian Embassy, the kangaroo. I thought Mary and Joseph had a cow, a lamb and 3 wise men in the stable, I can’t recall a kangaroo!
Honestly though, you have to be extra careful driving at the moment, because of all the puddles you are likely to get a motorbike or cyclist pulling straight out in front of you (mirrors don’t exist on two wheel modes of transport). I’ve watched some UN vehicles treating the puddles like a game, screaming down the road seeing how many Timorese they can soak en-route. I nearly got pushed off of the road today by a UN cop, registration number UN 0116, trying to overtake me on a bend then finding himself face to face with a nativity road block, so rather than pull back he cut me up pushed me off of the road. If I had been in the truck I may have stood my ground but I’m driving my friends car while he is on holiday, so I had to content myself with a lot of swearing, horn blowing and rude hand signals.
Christmas Eve we got burgled by some local scroates who saw the Christmas booze being loaded into the house, then the boys leaving to collect some food. They jumped over the back wall and slit open the mosquito net on my window with a knife. They raided my room and took $450, 2 credit cards and all my swimming costumes (strange huh!), then went through the house nicking a pair of binoculars, two cases of tiger and a bottle of gin, before escaping through the back door and back over the wall with my pushbike, amazingly. Now you would think the dogs would have created alarming which Ann would have heard because frighteningly she was in the house at the time, but she didn’t hear a thing. So we suspect that the scroates threw some food over which was drugged as the dogs were off of their dinner that night, and if you have ever met Doris, you know that that is a rare occasion. So that took the stuffing out of Christmas for me having to rustle up phone cards to ring the UK and cancel credit cards, then dealing with the police. I know this kind of thing happens the world over on Christmas Eve, at least I wasn’t a little kid that got all her presents stolen.
Talking of presents, there are some really tacky Chinese lighters being sold around town. I was standing outside Leader supermarket when one of the phone card vendors said ‘Hello Missus’ and showed me his lighter with disco lights, I told him my lighter had disco lights. ‘Hello Missus’ again and showed me the built in torch, so I got my lighter out and showed him my built in torch. ‘Hello Missus’ again and he pressed down the lighter to show me the flame, so I did the same but my lighter started playing Happy Birthday at the same time! Wayne had found the musical lighters in the Dili club and was so amused by them that he bought the whole stock and preceded to annoy everyone with renditions of ‘Oh my Darling Clementine’, ‘London Bridge is falling down’ and ‘Happy Birthday’ on a loop for the next week. Not to be outdone by my musical lighter, the phone card vendor tried a final ‘Hello Missus’ and showed me a lighter with a torch that displayed a provocatively clad woman illuminated in its beam. I don’t think he quite expected the peals of laughter from me as I groped for a $1 bill, what a great tacky Christmas present.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
3 T-Shirts in one day – East Timor 14th December 2007
Since my last update I had a glorious 10 day holiday in Bali. My friend John came over from the UK and he had never been to Asia before, which makes you look at a place with a fresh pair of eyes. We certainly did Bali, after a couple of nights in Sanur with some crazy hard drinking New Zealanders for company; we hired a car and toured the island, after the compulsory shopping trip to Marks and Spencer’s of course! First stop was Lovina to go dolphin watching at dawn, then onto hot springs and massage. Next stop Lake Batur visiting some temples en-route and sometimes almost having to physically fight your way back to the car; it’s hard to close the car door when there is an arm stuck in it wielding a fistful of postcards! God some of those souvenir ladies can be very insistent.
After watching the sunrise over the lake from the hotel, we moved on to Ubud, which bears no resemblance to the Ubud I visited 20 years ago. It’s charming, and the hotel we found was also charming with carved 4 poster beds, lush greenery around the swimming pool which backed on to bright green rice fields. Incredible at only $30 per night. In Ubud we went to see traditional Balinese dancing which was more like an opera, followed by fire dancing. The next night we watched live jazz at the Jazz cafe. Then on to Amed for the amazing rice terraces and a night in Candidasa. Templed out and weary we returned to Sanur to have our spirits a little dampened by the unscrupulous money changers. If you see a really good rate, beware; always make sure that you are last person to count the money as the good ones count the money again and suddenly you walk away 200,000rp short (about $22). If you insist on counting it again they suddenly come up with a story about commission and a lower rate as they know they are not going to get away with the fast hand trick. Another thing you have to watch is mixing up the 5,000 note with the 50,000; John bought some tobacco for 55,000 which the guy behind the counter was happily counting. Luckily I noticed that John had in fact given him 550,000, if I hadn’t spotted it, that transaction would have cost him $60.
I know cheating and corruption goes on all around the world, but in Indonesia it seems rife. When the police pull you over, even if you have done nothing wrong, you know it’s going to cost you 50,000 and you get the money ready, the sooner you pay them, the sooner you can be on your way. East Timor is not perfect either; at the border you should pay $30 for a 30 day visa, but many tourists are told that they can only have a 15 day visa. Correct me if I’m wrong but if a 30 day visa is $30, shouldn’t a 15 day visa be $15, but they are still charged $30 for it. So what happens to the extra $15?
Talking of visas, whenever I get my passport photos taken in the Fuji shop, they always come out washed out and over exposed. I worked out that this is done on purpose as the Timorese consider light skin beautiful, so the cameraman makes his clients paler and attractive. Unfortunately, he doesn’t change the settings so all the Malai come out looking like ghosts.
Having visitors from Europe means you can request the odd items you can’t get in East Timor. Between John and Kasia (a recent visitor from Poland), I received shampoo and a DVD, other people received Cheesy Wotsits , Slivovitz, beef suet, guitar strings and flea collars (the collars were not a personal present, obviously!). I sometimes get puzzled responses when I reply to the question, ‘Is there anything you want me to bring?’
Nearly every day since I returned from Bali we have had one or more electricity cuts per day and the place is so hot! It seems much hotter than last year, but it’s just the humidity is greater. Stand outside for a couple of minutes and you have sweat trickling down you, not pleasant. Days are judged by the number of T-shirts you wear and just recently they have all been 3 t-shirt days. It’s not good when you find your own smell offensive. On the plus side though, on one dive the water temperature registered 30 degrees.
The electricity cuts are so frequent that none of the traffic lights are working as it would be too tedious to try and reset them every time the power goes off. Guess what? There is no major chaos, the traffic is still moving just like it did before the traffic lights were installed six months ago. The taxis and horrendous one-way system around Dili ensure that nothing moves too fast, allowing traffic to merge when it needs to. That was the only good thing that happened at the beginning of the crisis, the one-way system was scrapped, only to be reinstated by the Ozzy troops when they arrived.
One bargain I have found to help in the dark is a Timor Leste lighter at 50 cents. It has 3 light sources; the flame itself, a set of disco lights which are set off as soon as you click the lighter (much to my amusement), and a small built in torch with a great beam that you can use to light your way to the generator.
On November the 12th it was Remembrance Day for the Santa Cruz massacre. Candles were lit and lined the street and beach, our local village made a bonfire on the beach, played guitars and set off fireworks, except some of the fireworks were actually flares. The poor dogs were petrified. The trial of the guys that shot the policemen last May was held last week, sentences ranged from 10 to 12 years with 7 acquittals. 12 years doesn’t seem a long sentence for murder.
We are seeing more and more turtle shells for sale. Usually out in the sticks at the side of the road. Turtles, coral and some shells are protected species in East Timor, carry a $50,000 fine or up to 5 years in jail for anyone caught buying or selling them. Not that would make any difference to the Timorese because they couldn’t imagine $50,000 in their wildest dreams. They just know that the Malai will pay $20-$30 per turtle shell and they and their family can eat well. The stupid thing is that both flights out of East Timor go to countries where these products are illegal also, so whoever is buying them stands a great chance of getting them confiscated anyway.
After watching the sunrise over the lake from the hotel, we moved on to Ubud, which bears no resemblance to the Ubud I visited 20 years ago. It’s charming, and the hotel we found was also charming with carved 4 poster beds, lush greenery around the swimming pool which backed on to bright green rice fields. Incredible at only $30 per night. In Ubud we went to see traditional Balinese dancing which was more like an opera, followed by fire dancing. The next night we watched live jazz at the Jazz cafe. Then on to Amed for the amazing rice terraces and a night in Candidasa. Templed out and weary we returned to Sanur to have our spirits a little dampened by the unscrupulous money changers. If you see a really good rate, beware; always make sure that you are last person to count the money as the good ones count the money again and suddenly you walk away 200,000rp short (about $22). If you insist on counting it again they suddenly come up with a story about commission and a lower rate as they know they are not going to get away with the fast hand trick. Another thing you have to watch is mixing up the 5,000 note with the 50,000; John bought some tobacco for 55,000 which the guy behind the counter was happily counting. Luckily I noticed that John had in fact given him 550,000, if I hadn’t spotted it, that transaction would have cost him $60.
I know cheating and corruption goes on all around the world, but in Indonesia it seems rife. When the police pull you over, even if you have done nothing wrong, you know it’s going to cost you 50,000 and you get the money ready, the sooner you pay them, the sooner you can be on your way. East Timor is not perfect either; at the border you should pay $30 for a 30 day visa, but many tourists are told that they can only have a 15 day visa. Correct me if I’m wrong but if a 30 day visa is $30, shouldn’t a 15 day visa be $15, but they are still charged $30 for it. So what happens to the extra $15?
Talking of visas, whenever I get my passport photos taken in the Fuji shop, they always come out washed out and over exposed. I worked out that this is done on purpose as the Timorese consider light skin beautiful, so the cameraman makes his clients paler and attractive. Unfortunately, he doesn’t change the settings so all the Malai come out looking like ghosts.
Having visitors from Europe means you can request the odd items you can’t get in East Timor. Between John and Kasia (a recent visitor from Poland), I received shampoo and a DVD, other people received Cheesy Wotsits , Slivovitz, beef suet, guitar strings and flea collars (the collars were not a personal present, obviously!). I sometimes get puzzled responses when I reply to the question, ‘Is there anything you want me to bring?’
Nearly every day since I returned from Bali we have had one or more electricity cuts per day and the place is so hot! It seems much hotter than last year, but it’s just the humidity is greater. Stand outside for a couple of minutes and you have sweat trickling down you, not pleasant. Days are judged by the number of T-shirts you wear and just recently they have all been 3 t-shirt days. It’s not good when you find your own smell offensive. On the plus side though, on one dive the water temperature registered 30 degrees.
The electricity cuts are so frequent that none of the traffic lights are working as it would be too tedious to try and reset them every time the power goes off. Guess what? There is no major chaos, the traffic is still moving just like it did before the traffic lights were installed six months ago. The taxis and horrendous one-way system around Dili ensure that nothing moves too fast, allowing traffic to merge when it needs to. That was the only good thing that happened at the beginning of the crisis, the one-way system was scrapped, only to be reinstated by the Ozzy troops when they arrived.
One bargain I have found to help in the dark is a Timor Leste lighter at 50 cents. It has 3 light sources; the flame itself, a set of disco lights which are set off as soon as you click the lighter (much to my amusement), and a small built in torch with a great beam that you can use to light your way to the generator.
On November the 12th it was Remembrance Day for the Santa Cruz massacre. Candles were lit and lined the street and beach, our local village made a bonfire on the beach, played guitars and set off fireworks, except some of the fireworks were actually flares. The poor dogs were petrified. The trial of the guys that shot the policemen last May was held last week, sentences ranged from 10 to 12 years with 7 acquittals. 12 years doesn’t seem a long sentence for murder.
We are seeing more and more turtle shells for sale. Usually out in the sticks at the side of the road. Turtles, coral and some shells are protected species in East Timor, carry a $50,000 fine or up to 5 years in jail for anyone caught buying or selling them. Not that would make any difference to the Timorese because they couldn’t imagine $50,000 in their wildest dreams. They just know that the Malai will pay $20-$30 per turtle shell and they and their family can eat well. The stupid thing is that both flights out of East Timor go to countries where these products are illegal also, so whoever is buying them stands a great chance of getting them confiscated anyway.
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