East Timor Visa Run

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

Arrived in Dili 4 days ago after a typically hellish long Indonesian bus journey. It was rare to drive more than 200 yds in a straight line. After 12 hours of curve and swerve you really need at least a couple of days for your guts to get back to normal. The only good thing I can say about the bus ride was that only one woman spewed. Unfortunately she was sitting directly behind me.

The scars of war are still quite fresh in the border town of Atambora. Shells of burnt out buildings pockmarked with bullet holes. 3 UN aid workers were shot and killed here just a couple of years ago.

Crossing the border into E Timor was relatively easy. I changed to another bus for the final 4 hour ride into Dili.

The people here are incredibly poor. Dirty villages with thatch homes built next to recently burnt cement buildings with only foundations left behind. When Indonesia finally pulled out of East Timor they burnt buildings, blew up bridges and murdered the E Timorese. The infrastructure is slowly being rebuilt.

We pulled into Dili just after sunset and into the darkest capital city I have ever visited. The driver couldn't locate the backpackers hotel and so he dropped me off near the oceanfront at one of the better foreign aid worker hotels. I was disorientated and willing to pay anything for a bed for the night. Unfortunately the hotel was full. The bus had left and not a taxi was in sight. No streetlights, no map and no idea about the neighborhood. It looked pretty borderline, even though it was only a few blocks from Parliament. After wandering for a few minutes I found an Aid worker flop house and for $20 had one of the best nights sleep in ages.

The next morning I headed straight for the Indonesian embassy and filed my application for another 60 day visa. The immigration department was pretty organized an lacked much of the chaos I had expected.
Come back in 3 days for your passport the woman said. Great news, we had been expecting it to take at least a week.
I left the embassy and started wandering the streets. Just two blocks away I came upon the first of many refugee camps. Tent cities, homes to thousands of people either driven from their communities by violence or destruction of homes and property.
I have the return journey to Kupang to look forward to!