Melb - Darwin - Darwin - Dili

Got on the plane to darwin, and as we were walking on I saw that there was no one in the premium seats. So I asked the flight attendant and moved! Free upgrade, perks of traveling alone.

Pretty uneventful flight, apart from the guy behind me snoring like a freight train. Landed in darwin, picked up my bag, rechecked, then to wait for 3 hours.

I grabbed some breakfast, sat and read my book for a bit, then tried to go to gate, they had closed passport control so I couldn't go through immigration and passport control to the international terminal. I waited another hour before being able to go through.

I was waiting to board and realized that Steve Bracks was on my flight to Dili. I found out later that he is the ambassador to Timor Leste so that makes sense. I happened to have a look in the inflight mag and there was an article on Timor, it mentioned the marathon and the tour de Timor (TDT) and there was one of Mat's photos from the marathon. Pretty cool.. We got warm scones and tea, then arrived in Dili.

When you fly to Dili, you fly over the country for about half an hour before you land, it is such an amazing and beautiful country from the air.

First day back in Timor, it's a bit strange being back here. But the people are just a nice and the weather just as hot and sticky so it feels the same.

Spent the day trying to work out what we were doing, there is so many people working on this event but its almost like it's too much, everyone is running around like mad, and no one tells us anything.. We are staying at Timor Lodge, which is the race headquarters instead of at Mick's as there is just too many people there, and we don't want to be in the way.

We went and had lunch, and then showed the city to one of the volunteers who had made friends with us, after that Mat took me to the massage place he keeps going on about.. Genuine massage place not a "massage" place haha..

I get a bit weirded out by people touching me like that so I wasn't super keen, but the massage was pretty good.. It was a 60 min full body massage, and I mean full body.. After she did my back and legs etc, I was asked to turn over then she did the front.. Including my boobs.. Well that got SUPER AWKWARD! anyway..

After that we headed back to Timor Lodge. Because it's kinda the headquarters everyone comes and goes, it's great to just hang around and you chat to everyone as the come past.

I also met Sara today, another volunteer, she actually did a year at PSC, so she has been helping us shoot among other things. She is a really lovely girl, we get on well.