The traffic in Dili is so ***BUSY***,
it just goes on and on and on, barely any lapses. The drivers and
motorists take great liberties in the dearth of traffic lights. I
thought that it wouldn't be so bad coz most of the locals can't
afford cars, but there's a lot of Taxis, Motorcycles, “Mikrolets”
(minibuses) and Jeeps (I presume for expatriates and the rich elite
Timorese). Thankfully Taxis are quite cheap by Western standards
($2-5 / trip), so we could save the hassle of crossing roads, but for
the occasions that we had to, it was really terrifying. I was really
paranoid of crossing the roads, so I stockpiled on food to last at
least 1 month before I have to go to a supermarket again. I was
initially planning to travel outside of Dili on my days off for
touristy stuff (eg visiting Mt. Ramelau, the tallest mountain in East
Timor with the Mary Statue at the top), but scrapped that thought due
to the poor quality of country roads (heaps of potholes). Maybe in
the future...
There wasn't much beach area at the
coast of Dili, but the scenery was still pretty nonetheless. And then
we visited the Tais (traditional hand-woven cloth) market, and local
fruit and vegetable markets. It was weird that East Timor doesn't
really produce Durians even though they have similar climate to
Malaysia and Indonesia. I was surprised that I haven't seen any
beggars so far, or people begging us for money. I read somewhere that
begging (“Ezmola”) is unacceptable in their culture, but would've
thought that people would eventually get desperate.
The East Timorese children seem to like
posing in photos even if they don't get to keep it. A boy asked me to
snap him, and I showed him the photo, in which he was pleased. His
Dad didn't seem to mind at all. This is so different from Australia,
where an adult stranger taking photos of children in public is
suspected of being a Paedophile. The irony was that statistically
from previous readings, there is sadly a lot of child sexual abuse
and incest in villages outside of Dili, much more so than in
Australia. And this is supposed to be a Catholic country...
We visited the famous Cristo Rei which
is the Jesus Christ statue standing on Earth a short drive's way from
Dili. It was tiring climbing up the hill, but it was interesting to
see the intermittent stone carvings along the footpaths depicting the
scenes prior to Jesus' crucifixion. The scene from the top with the
statue was wonderful, nice and windy. Funnily when I looked at the
Australia part of the Earth bit, Tasmania was missing!
However due to the traffic issue, I'm
extremely reticent to do any more sightseeing around Dili unless
invited by others.
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Add: Laptop batteries are running out, I'll re-order and add captions to these photos next time!
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