Friday afternoon Mat and I went into Dili and tried to get everything we needed before we went home, he wanted to get a haircut, a couple more tais and a few other things. Mat was so excited by getting a haircut, it tool nearly an hour, but in that time he got his hair washed 4 times, got a head and shoulder massage and a haircut, all for $10 which was awesome, Mick said back in the day it only used to be $5!
Just as we Mat finished we got a call from Mick, we were supposed to be having dinner with the President on Saturday, but that had been cancelled and we were to be having drinks with him in 2 hours time... Ahhh. We raced home had showers and had to get to Micks so we could go to the presidents house for drinks..
I spent the next 2.5 hours freakin out, thinking I'm way out of my league etc, I don't know anything about politics or Timor's history or anything else he might want to talk about!! When we got there we waked in and he was just hanging out with a group of local kids, one of which he was throwing a birthday party for. He told us that this young girl had told him it was her brithday when he had seen her the day before and he asked if she was having a party, she wasn't because her dad was in hospital and her family was poor because of his medical bills. So he decided to throw her a party, they had pizza and chocolate and cake, all of which are major luxuries here. Amazing. Couldn't imagine Julia Gillard throwing a children's party..
We all sat down at this massive hand made wooden table, in his absolutely beautiful kind of out door room at his house. One end had all this amazing finger food, there was some sort of spicy chicken, cheeses, fruit, amazing like roasted nuts, and other stuff that I'm not even sure what it was, it was freakin good though. The other end of the table had a selection of the best spirits you could want, gin, cognac, brandy, scotch, red and white wines and they then bought out lemons, limes, soft drinks, tonic water, and ice.
So we sat there for close to 3 hours having a conversation with the president. He truly is an amazing person, so humble and so honest, some of the stories he told were unbelievable, like how his family had lost 3 of 8 kids during the invasion, how his mum was on the Indonesians hit list because she was so out spoken against them, even to the point of smuggling photos, letters and video to any western person she could find so they could take it out of the country and to show the world.
Mick got us to have a photo with him, guess we needed bragging rites! Another few handshakes and a hug from the Pres and we left.
No one (except me) was ready to go home so we went to Dili beach hotel, one of the malae bars along the beach and got some dinner, and a couple drinks. We were standing right near the front and noticed that the cab driver from last weekend was out the front.. Mick was really angry about the whole incident so he went and spoke to him, basically the guy was a nutter, his response was along the lines, that he would punch any malae who tried to rip him off, he just went on and on to mick about his friends being idiots and that they should fuck off out of the country.. Anyway. Mick being Mick has friends in high places, so he went and spoke to the chief of police about it, this guy is going down. Mick really loves Timor and cares about how people see it so he was really annoyed about this guy. After Mick had talked to him he stood there and stared at us for half an hour, fucking creep.
We left and went next door to castaways another bar and had another drink or 2, I was so freakin tired and struggling to stay awake so I stopped drinking. After castaways the group decided to go go to Casa Minah a Portuguese dance club. We walked up to the door and there was a sign saying private party, they asked for an invite, then saw Mick and just told us to go through.. Wish I had that power!
We walked in and there was people everywhere, mostly malae, they had a massive projector screen playing zumba, random as.. We had a bit of a dance and everyone else had another drink or 2. I spent most of the time outside, best thing they ever did in aust was ban smoking in pubs/clubs. By then end of the night I stank so bad like cigarettes. When we decided to leave here I grabbed the keys, Mick was pretty drunk, and I wasnt going to let him drive. We went back to one of Mick and Rich's friends houses for more drinks. By this point i so want to go home! it's like 4am.
Shaun (the friend) is leaving Timor for the US in a couple of days. His wife is pregnant and is due in about 3 weeks so there was more celebratory drinks at his place, they cracked into a bottle of Bollinger, the finest vodka, tequila, whiskey, whatever you wanted it was probably there providing it was top shelf. Then they started smoking cigarettes, cigars (that were given to Jose Ramos-Horta from Fidel Castro and then to Mick) and pot. I had the biggest freakin headache from all the smoke and lack of sleep.. I finally convinced them to let me take them home at 6.30am. We dropped Mick off at his hotel and then went home. Rich was so gone. He passed out with his eyes open on the back seat, I remember saying to Mat if he was still breathing.. When we got back home we tried to shake him awake, but we could only get about 20 seconds where he was awake then he would pass out again.. Mat ended up having to carry him out of the car, we figured we had no hope of getting him up stairs to his bed so we left him on the daybed out the front. When we eventually got up at like 11 we went out and woke him up, he was so confused Hahaha. Ended up being a good night.
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