Author Archives: Mosher

First dives in East Timor

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Everyone's a critic

Everyone's a critic

I found a local bakery doing brightly-coloured cakes and picked up a couple for breakfast. Maybe not healthy, but I’m on holiday so I don’t care. Andrew was waiting for me when I got back and we had a short chat then jumped into the car with Krystal and Catherine (I think – apologies as ever for my pathetic memory for names), two sisters from Brisbane.

They’re here doing voluntary work up in the hills and usually only make it down at the weekends. They’ve been taking their Open Water with Andrew and the group seemed to get along well. Andy’s an easy chap to talk to with a wealth of experience. Hailing from South Africa, he’s doing contract work out here and diving around it predominantly on the weekends.

As I was partly assisting, I didn’t get to spend as much time looking at the scenery as I’d normally hope. However, I worked my way up to Divemaster for a few reasons and one of them was so I could help out with things like this and I really enjoyed it. The girls have much better eyesight than Andy or I, so in between practise exercises and working on buoyancy they spotted some excellent examples of aquatic life.

Lionfish

Lionfish

Pick of the bunch was probably the school of lion fish. Usually you see one or two of these at most. If  you’re lucky. We found a group of five. Also in the area are scorpion fish, stone fish and many other types that don’t actually hurt if you touch them. Krystal also spotted a ray buried under the sand.

Including a surface break for refreshments and de-toxing, we were out until early afternoon. The girls were very receptive to criticism and pointers and had visibly improved from the first dive to the second. As with many starting divers, their main issue was one of buoyancy. Hopefully the advice I gave will help them and they’ll keep the hobby up. Living in Brisbane, they’re only a short hop away from some excellent sites back home.

On the way back, Andy mentioned he had a group on Monday – a father and two 15-year old boys – and would I like to help out? No charge, obviously. Pope. Poop. Woods. This is why I did the Divemaster course! So that’s Monday morning sorted.

Stone fish

Stone fish

The girls were supposed to reappear to collect some of the photos, but I’ve been sat here for two hours now so I guess they changed their minds. No worries – ladies, you have my email. Drop me a line and I’ll post the pics somewhere you can get the full-resolution versions from! [Update – they passed by quickly on their way to Mass – hope you weren’t too late!]

My plan currently is to spend Sunday around the surrounding area on a motorbike ($25 including fuel from the hostel). Monday for the dives and in the afternoon I’ll pop my passport in for a new Indonesian visa. I’ve calculated it’s far cheaper to do the reverse trip than to fly directly back to Bali. It’s more of a pain to sort, but it’ll save me around $150. It’s not like I don’t have the time!

Scorpion fish

Scorpion fish

I may head off into the countryside on Tuesday and Wednesday, just for the change. With luck, my visa should be collectable by Wednesday or Thursday and then I can sort out my return bus and a flight from Kupang to Bali.

All I need now is a non-ANZ ATM so I don’t get screwed for $2 with every withdrawal. ANZ – you’re evil. If I ever move to Oz, rest assured I’m not banking with you. Oh, and a cybercafe with a working printer. I have to have a printout of my flight tickets for my visa application. More details on the visa farce shortly. Seriously, they make it like drawing teeth.

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Kupang to Dili

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Re"cycle"d chairs

Re"cycle"d chairs

I ended up getting out of bed at 1am to put earplugs in as the dogs over the road decided to have a conversation with everyone on the damn island. Other than that, I slept fine and was stood by the gate for my pickup. They took me to the Timor Tour and Travel office where I handed over my IDR185000 for a one-way, bottom-numbing, 13-hour ride.

The buses are fine – 12-seater minibuses with aircon, although the aircon is never switched on! The stereo is and I was regaled by everything from Indonesian classics to Bon Jovi at a vaguely tolerable level for most of the journey.

For those who get travel-sick it’s worth popping a couple of pills. The roads vary a lot on the journey from pretty decent to “why am I not in a Landrover?”. This is the case on both sides of the border.

We had a couple of rest stops, but I ate nothing at all as seems to be “normal” for me when I’m on long journeys. The final pause within Indonesia was in Atambua, the last town before the border. There, our immigration cards for East Timor were filled out for us by staff in the shop. I spotted a nice church down the road so went for a wander and took some photos.

Out of place, but rather quaint

Out of place, but rather quaint

The longest break is the journey was, not surprisingly, the border. Exiting Indonesia was fine and I even had two soldiers offering me a seat as they checked my passport. Huge smiles and handshakes – I guess they don’t see too many foreigners making the land crossing.

Checking into East Timor was pretty easy also. There are five classes of visa and I ended up with a “Class II” at $30. Given I may only be in the country for a week I could possibly have managed on a “Class I” as I think that may be the transit visa ($20). However, I wasn’t taking the risk. A quick luggage check by the security guys and we re-loaded and continued on our bumpy way.

I’d slept on and off for the ride, but my bottom was genuinely going numb by the time we arrived in Dili. I was also the last person to be dropped off so managed to experience some of the hairiest minibus driving ever. Some of the roads weren’t much better than the ones I went up in the Cameron Highlands and I was in a huge 4×4 on that trip.

Exit Indonesia...

Exit Indonesia...

The Dili Backpackers welcomed me in. After a quick luggage dump, the first thing I did was book some dives for the next day. Randomly I picked a guy called Andrew who was advertising on a new poster. $30 is the best rate I’d heard of here and being a 1-man operation, it was more likely to be a small group. As it happened, I was going to be diving with two Australian girls on their 3rd and 4th dives as they went through their Open Water with him.

A meal was called for as I hadn’t eaten in almost a day. I picked an Indian over the road and enjoyed a very decent chicken madras. With a naan and a drink, it came to an even $5. Very nice and just the right sized portion for my shrunken stomach.

...enter East Timor

...enter East Timor

Dili – in fact East Timor on the whole – is fairly pricey. Bars charge around $5 upwards for a beer (though you can get an ice cold tinnie from the street vendors for $1.50) and for $10 in Bali I’d be living in a flat of my own. It’s affordable, but more than you’d expect for a fledgling country. MInd, they’re trying to make all they can off the “visiting” UN staff who are on seemingly endless budgets so who can blame them.

A stroll east took me to a park which was lit up and from where I could hear live music. I had to pop in and look, and watched a few local performers playing covers and their own tracks. A young guy called Nevis struck up a conversation with me and we whiled away half an hour or so talking about Timor-Leste, politics, the UN, music and football. Nice guy.

Flying the flag

Flying the flag

On the way back to the hostel I did a quick email check at the “slow” place ($2 per hour and plenty fast enough for everything I needed to do). I then got back “home” to find it all locked up… Nobody told me about that! I managed to get one of the chaps from the attached restaurant to open a door for me, had a chinwag with my two roomies (Jean from Portugal and Christine from the States) and then nodded off around midnight.

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Bali to Kupang

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Welcome to Kupang

Welcome to Kupang

The flight was pleasant enough with a small meal provided and we landed more or less on time in Kupang on the island of Timor. I got talking to a Fin and a couple of Aussies and ended up sharing a cab with them into town which saved a bit of cash.

The Lavalon hostel is about as basic as basic gets, but it fits in with my minor provisos. They do have dorms at IDR30,000 per night, but you can’t book these through Hostelbookers, so I ended up with a room to myself for IDR40,000. I’d have had the dorm to myself anyway as there was nobody else around.

I took a very short walk over the road to the bar, which is about as open air as you can get and still have a roof. The view west is over the beach where kids were playing football and behind me was the sea. I sat and enjoyed a couple of beers with an Aussie from the “other” Newcastle who went by the name of Bugger. I kid you not.

He’s been coming to Kupang for months at a time to catch the surf on one of the islands offshore. After a while, we were joined by more Aussies including the ones I’d been talking to earlier.

View from the Lavalon

View from the Lavalon

Lavalon serves very cold Bintang in big bottles for IDR25000 a pop. They also have free wi-fi which works at a decent speed. I ended up eating elsewhere, though, as another chap walked me onto the next main road up to a small shop specialising in satay. For IDR15000 (about a pound) I had 8 sticks of chicken satay, a portion of rice, a bowl of rather nice soup and an iced tea. Can’t complain!

One more beer at the bar and I headed back to read for a bit and crash out. My bus to Dili was booked for the next morning and I had a 5am pickup. Also, the owner of Lavalon is on good terms with the Dili Backpackers so he text messaged them for me. After all the hassle trying to sort out a booking, that was all it took!

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KL to Bali and on…

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Bed for the night at Denpasar Airport, Bali #lp
Not exactly five star…

Right now I’m in Bali again, and last night decided just to sleep at the Ngurah Rai Airport International Departures area. It’s a little loud (the tanoy announcements are disjointed bits of separately recorded phrases and some are yelled out), but the hassle of getting into Kuta and finding somewhere only to get a few hours’ sleep, turn round and come back just didn’t seem worth it.

KL was the usual – too many McDonald’s and cheap accommodation. I saw State of Play (decent adaptation of the BBC series) and Ice Age 3 (far better than the second one) at the cinema (not in 3D regrettably as the times of the performances didn’t suit), and sorted out my US currency for East Timor.

This wasn’t as easy as it sounds as the ATMs in the city decided to refuse to serve me at the time I was planning on withdrawing the cash. Checking my balance was fine, but forget getting money out. No idea why it happened, but I was able to “buy” the cash at the bank using my debit card so it worked out OK.

Leah turned up safe, sound and teary-eyed on the night of the 7th without any luggage. Due to a security scare at Edinburgh, she was delayed four hours and missed her long-haul from Heathrow. She was shoehorned onto a QANTAS replacement (and upgraded) but her bags didn’t make it.

Fortunately, they were at the airport when she went back on the 8th for her flight to Perth. Let’s just hope they make it to Oz on the same plane as her.

Immigration in Bali was a slow, painful nightmare. The one good thing was a complete lack of interrogation over my choice of 7-day visa. It’s $10 rather than $25 which suits me as I’ll be in Indonesia for at most three nights. I was expecting to have to show travel plans and tickets and stuff, but no need. The queues, however, were abysmally slow. From touchdown to reaching the luggage carousel was about an hour.

I dodged the taxi drivers and the “cheap hotel” merchants (the cheapest on offer was 120,000 Rupiah when I was paying less than half that last year) and found myself a nice bench. For a brief period I had free wifi on my mobile, but not the laptop. Hopefully some of you will have caught the Twitter posts. I have since discovered (and am using) a wifi simply labelled “3com” over near the domestic departures. There’s also a lounge nearby (Indosat) which is offering free wifi.

Of note is that the ATM to the right of the exit (as you walk out) from International Arrivals charges for both balance checks and withdrawals (2000 and 3900 Rupiah respectively). Not a lot compared to the extortionate new Thai fees, but you can dodge it by using another machine. The one just outside International Departures charges no fee.

I’m not as tired as I expected though how people sleep on hard wooden surfaces all the time is beyond me. My check-in is in around 90 minutes, and battery on my netbook down to 2 hours. Time to grab some breakfast I think. With luck I should be at my guesthouse in Kupang by 5pm.

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Update infrequency

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Back to one of those times when I’ll be updating quite sporadically, I fear.

I’m currently in KL awaiting the (4-hour delayed) arrival of Leah from the UK courtesy of a security scare at Edinburgh Airport yesterday. We’re both here one night then I depart for Bali and she for Perth. Her luggage will hopefully follow soon after.

I arrive in Bali at 22:00 local time, have to find somewhere to stay and depart for Kupang the next afternoon around 15:00. One or two nights there then on to Dili. I’ll be there somewhere between seven and ten nights before flying back to Bali. During that time I have no idea what my net access will be like, so I’ll be tapping stuff up on the netbook for the next time I get online.

Similarly in Bali, Leah and I will be island-hopping and so forth for a fortnight. I’ll try to get updates done, but likely it’ll be a huge deluge once I get to Bangkok around the 6th of August.

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