A flavour of the Orient
Rai & Stephie in Asia

Tourists are very thin on the ground in West Timor...we saw none outside kupang..... the bonus is that indonesians here are super friendly and they get very very very excited when they spot two strangers with backpacks and a guitar  ....very little bahasa indonesian language is spoken let alone english so we used our play acting skills, drawings etc to communicate. ...Selamat nok noka (good morning) is about all we can say in the local timor lingo..

Best way to travel around Timor is on these multi coloured, techno bass thumping minivans (known as bemos) and buses. Windscreens are covered with girly silhouettes  (some are quite explicit) as well as pictures of wayne rooney and matt dillon. Just to make it extra difficult for the driver to negotiate the hairpin bends they hang squeezy caterpillars, love hearts and other gadgets from the windscreen....

Timor is pretty moutainous and in some parts like around Fatumenasi it even reminded us of bonny Scotland (picture alpine landscape with pristine forests, streams, cold and misty and lots of cows... ) Families live, sleep and cook in lontar huts. ...it gets super smokey inside as we found out when we stayed  2 nights with a local family...great experience and they loved the little guitar !

Feeling a little bit like indiana jones and with some tricky scooter riding (even across some recent landslides) we visited more remote traditional villages like Temkessi, None and Boti...in the old days the warriors in some of these villages used to go on head hunting expeditions....glad we didn't get our heads chopped off when we visited !

Timor is crazy when it comes to non stop chewing of beetle nut. It makes your mouth go red, it rots your teeth and apparently it gives you a nice high...must try it before we leave...little kiddies, mum dad, granny grandad, aunt uncle, policeman, bus driver...they are all busy doing it...we have some fab photos of red lips black teeth and red lips with no teeth.....!...photos coming online soooooooon....promise!

From countryside timor we plan to cross to the nearby island of Rote and the famous surfing waves of Nemberala were we are bound to see a few aussie surfers (but not as many as in Bali !)

Rai, steph and the guitar