Day One Timor.

so we made it, it was the most amazing flight out of Darwin, the sunrise was spectacular. flight to Dili was super quick, only about 50mins.

as we were landing seeing the country for the first time was amazing, huge hills, beautiful water, the river running into the ocean. and so many people standing outside the fence watching the planes come in.

we were picked up at the airport by Richard, one of mats contacts good mates and neighbours. he took us back to where we would be staying. its actually on the beach, 20m and theres water, this is a really simple and beautiful place.

after a bit of a nap, we went for a walk around to try to get our bearings, while walking down the beach we ran into a couple aussies, who live in the place next door, they gave us a crash course in Tetum which was really handy while we were wandering around. they also told us that we would be called 'malae' which basically means foreigner, it isnt an insult just a means of reference.

rich came back around 12 and took into town for lunch, we ended up going to a thai place, which was awesome, lunch and a drink $5USD
 
after lunch we got dropped of at one of the many markets and had a look around, we had a lot of people laugh at us and call out malae, Mat almost started a riot when he got his camera out. we struggled through with out limited tetum and the prasebook we bought with us from home, every time we bought something we would ask how much? and they would say $1 then change their mind and charge us $2, we knew we were being ripped off but didnt mind that much. everyone kept trying to make up buy this random food, that we later discovered to be betal. (think thats how its spelt) Mat tried it, i decided not too, he ended up spitting it out because it was horrible and he could then still taste it for the whole day..

 this is the market, it stretched on forever, built in between the trees, absolutely no system to it at all.

we decided to try to find a place to buy Sim cards for our phones, we had no idea which way to go or where we could actually get them. We asked a local and they told us to find Timor Telecom. after walking around for probably 2 hours or so, (every now and then getting directions from locals) we asked another guy and he offered to take us there, he walked with us for nearly 20 mins, told the people at the shop what we needed then waited out the from for another 10 mins to make sure we didn't have any problems. try getting someone in Melbourne to do that!


it was getting towards 5pm so we thought we would go back to the place we were staying, we weren't really sure what to do for food etc. we had asked rich what to tell the taxi driver to be able to get home. when we said that to the taxi driver he had no idea... after 40 mins in the cab we actually made it back to where we were staying, Rich didnt get home till quite late so  we ended up having 2 min noodles from our next door neighbor because she took pity on us..

there is a school near where we are staying, so walking around with our cameras we often get attacked by small kids, yelling 'Mister Mister, Photo Photo! or simply Malae! Malae! on our way home we got chased down the street after we had spent 10 mins with them taking photos., they ran home along side us.

 

would love to add way more photos but iv been sitting here for 2 hours and i have uploaded like 6 photos, i will never again complain about how fast my internet is..