And… It's a Wrap

“Mr Z! Mr Z! Where’s Mr Z?!” I gesture, vaguely, towards Customs, where my son is crouched atop our bike. It’s been two weeks since we last crossed this border, but his fan club seems to have grown.

It’s a dusty wasteland, twixt East Timor and Indonesia. There’s an optimistic archway and one of those token “friendship bridges” across a barely detectable stream that you find on the sort of borders, like this one, that people have recently killed and died for. (Having learnt his lesson on the Lao-Vietnamese border, Z is silent on this topic.)

I feel a weird mix of emotions, leaving. There’s a sense of regret. Because we hardly scratched the surface of Timor Leste. It’s fascinating. Unique. And yet, so small and so remote as it is, it’s somewhere, I feel, I’ll never return to. And that’s a loss.

There’s also a sense of, almost, homecoming, familiarity… The guys, in uniform, and out of uniform, remembering my son, crowding round him, fussing over him – he’s still slight enough and fair enough to be petted and spoilt by nuns, waitresses, policemen, soldiers.

Plus, he’s memorable. There’s not that many little Western boys that cross this border on a motorbike with Bali plates.

It’s good to be back, once again, to somewhere where we speak the language. But we didn’t get the best from East Timor.

Despite the first horrific shock, I like being location independent, the internet term for earning a living as one travels. But here it hasn’t worked out too great.

We got into Dili, the capital of Timor Leste, late in the week, with only a 15-day visa. And much of the time passed in a welter of deadlines, visa hassles and – oh yeah – one very basic cockup.

I had a deadline for Monday. One of those deadlines where you need to phone people, conduct interviews and use email.

I acquire the facilities to achieve this. A hotel with internet – and A DESK, oh joy of joys! A Timorese SIM card, plus credit.

And so we alternate surreally, on Friday and Monday, between phone calls to Bali and maths learning with the boy, heading out to the beach on weekends for all the world as if I’m actually working. Deadline done, our next step is to secure the visa we require to return to Indonesia.

Now. God knows I have had visa hassles enough. I figured that at this high-volume embassy, I’d be looking at half a day or so of queuing, paperwork and scootering around Dili in search of photocopy shops, followed by the freedom to explore.

Instead?

On my first visit, I get as far as the steel-fenced room out the front of the real embassy. I fill in the forms, pass them over, and learn that our passport photos should be on red backgrounds, not white, and that the embassy processes applications between 9 and 12.

On day 2, I bring in my red photos, and learn that in order for your application to be seen that day, you need to arrive before the door opens, by 8am at the latest. (Also? Fill in the forms in black biro, not black fibre tip.)

Z’s expostulations do not, I feel, help our cause.

On day 3, I leave him behind, and hit paydirt. Which leaves us with a week, plus or minus, of exploring time.

I want us to spend the night with former freedom fighters in their hideouts in the jungle near Los Palos. I want us to see the ancient cave paintings in the cliffs near Tutuala, and the sacred island of Jaco opposite it.

It’s going to be tight. But I figure we can do it.

We head down to Baucau, East Timor’s second city, a charming little place, a few hundred metres above the scorching heat of the coast, and stop at the Pink Palace, a Portuguese government resthouse, whose strawberry colonial grandeur contrasts oddly with the palm huts and sweet potatoes in the market place and the stream running across the road.

It’s a very Timorese vista, in fact. Swep’-up building, lovingly refurbed. Poverty and handcarts all around it.

We suss the markets. Swim in the gorgeous art deco spring-fed swimming pool. Admire the Portuguese ramparts. Use their internet – O mirabile visu!... Z discovers Portuguese food, and, err, we end up staying two nights.

How so? Well, it took us a while to get out of Dili, you see.

After finishing up at the Indonesian Embassy, I’m in a bit of a hurry to get to the ATM and thence out of town, so I hang a left. About 2 metres in a pair of traffic cops in a Toyota Hilux and splendiferous Village People uniforms flick on sirens, drive me onto the pavement and, sporting their most scary faces, announce that this is a one-way street.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t see the sign.”

Now, in Indonesia, when one turns down a one-way street by accident – and it’s not always easy to tell, whether by signs or the direction in which traffic is moving, that a street is supposed to be one-way — the cops wave one back in a bored fashion, stop traffic to enable a graceful exit, etc, etc. Here…

Well, for a moment, it feels they’re going to get medieval on my ass. Not least because the Indonesian driving license I got in Bali has expired.

There’s paperwork. A solemn ritual, during which I stand with fingers crossed that they will not check the date on my Indonesian driving license.

Then comes the kicker. “Now, you need to go to the Police Headquarters to pay the fine. It’s $21.50.”

Oh Christ, I think. We’re never going to get out of Dili at this rate.

Can these men possibly be the only incorruptible traffic cops in South-East Asia?

“Is it possible to pay here, in cash?” I venture, diplomatically.

Their faces light up like Christmas has come. “Is up to you,” they say, in the universal language of briby cops.

In the course of extricating the $25 we settle on, the zip on the camera bag which has for so long functioned as my handbag gives up the ghost.

Christ, I think. We are doomed to stay in this city.

The cops, now our new best friends, stop traffic for us to turn, then personally escort us to the cashpoint, seeing us off with a big, friendly wave.

Now East Timor is exxy, relative to Indonesia, at least as a tourist: hotels and restaurants run two to four times the cost across the border. Prices for stuff that poorer locals buy are 25-50% over, barring petrol, which the Indonesian government subsidises down to 50 cents a litre, and the Timorese government merely refrains from taxing.

Anywise, I figure that, rather than take out too many dollars that I’ll only have to change at the border, we’ll stay at the Pink Palace when we get to Baucau, and put that on a card.

Or, if the Pink Palace doesn’t take cards – unlikely, I figure, given it’s not only the best hotel in Timor Leste’s second city but HAS WIRELESS INTERNET — I can get cash out at Baucau’s well-attested ATM.

A foolproof plan, it seems, from the perspective of Dili, with its myriad ATMs and several credit-card friendly eateries.

But as I stare at the error screen on Baucau’s ATM, nestled outside a firmly uncomputerised post office, this seems – well, a schoolgirl error of the worst kind, frankly.

“When will the ATM be fixed?” I ask the guy, optimistically, in Indonesian.

“I don’t know,” he says, with a shrug that’s positively Mediterranean in its expressiveness. “You need to go to Dili.” Dili is three hours west, and where we came from. We are heading east.

“Can I change rupiah in Baucau?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says. “At Timor Telecom.”

Problem solved. Until I realise that our emergency stash of several million rupiah is, erm, also in Dili, in our other bag, and I begin to swear.

And so we abandon hope of Tutuala and Jaco Island, and drive the three hours back to Dili. I’m gutted.

“Well, Mum,” says Z, consolingly. “That’s saved us four more hours on the bike. And, anyway, I’ve seen a lot of islands.”

Back in Dili, however, I’m not yet ready to give up on the idea of seeing at least one Timorese island. Atauro’s there, looming mountainous only 30k across the bay.

We missed the weekly ferry on our wild goose chase down to Baucau but I’ve heard there are fishing boats that will take you for $10 a head.

I track down the place they leave from, a spit of sand opposite the Esporto (Ministry of Sport) if you’re Timorese, or by the Casa Europa (European Union building), if you’re not, and make enquiries.

No one knows.

And then a guy piles out of a taxi, with several 20kg sacks of rice and the general air of a man who will be taking his rice onto a boat as soon as one materialises.

“Do you know about boats to Atauro?” I ask.

“There’s one at 3am,” he says.

Okay, I think, wondering what bribe I’m going to need to swing past junior to get him up at that ungodly hour. (He got up at 1am to climb Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, but that, as the highest mountain in South-East Asia, if you discount the Himalayas and Papua, which we (naturally) do, had serious bragging rights.)

Anywise. The boat will take us for $15. “Great!” I say. “Which boat?”

He points.

Now, the boat is pink. Which is always a plus.

On the down side? It’s only marginally larger than the sort of rowing boat that you see on ponds in English parks. It’s sitting low in the water, even without sacks of rice, sundry passengers, me, Z and our bags. Its planks are on the saggy side and I dread to imagine the state of the outboard.

I give this conveyance, to my shame, some serious consideration.

For a snorkelling trip, one that stays within feasible swimming distance and sight of inhabited islands? Conceivably.

Over 30k of strait so deep that schooling whales and nuclear subs run through it? In the dark?

I think not.

And, by the time the other option appears, the daily water taxi which leaves each day at 7.30am, and is going to run us $35 per head, each way, plus accommodation on the island, I stare miserably at my dollar stash, and feel that it is time to say “adeus” to East Timor…

We had, in our way, a decent sendoff. There is not much that moves my spawn. So when he puts his head on my arm and says, “This is the most beautiful place. It’s just so, well, tranquil…” my cynical heart does a little melting act.

We stopped in Maubara, the last town of any size at all before the Indonesian border, to have lunch in the remains of a Portuguese fort.

Up a dirt track a little way out of town, we stop to stay the night in a convent, run by Carmelite nuns – the talkative type, not the silent kind.

And their gardens are gorgeous. The perfect blend of beauty – bougainvillea and stone pines – with the functional – coconut palms and papaya trees – all stepping down to the sea, a kilometre or so away, but still chuntering calmly.

We chat to the young men who will soon be ordained as deacons, enjoying their retreat there, and Sister Zena, Z’s biggest fan short of the border.

We eat stripy chocolate cake cooked in their kitchens, salad, chicken, phenomenal quantities of delicious food. And read, and draw, and talk a bit in our simple room.

We haven’t seen the best of East Timor. But for a dose of sweetness as we leave, Maubara has it made.