Timor-Leste, Timor Lorosa'e, East Timor

As part of the Timor-Leste Legal Education Project, we spent a week in Dili meeting with students, NGOs, and government officials to vet the legal textbooks we were drafting. It still amuses me that I co-authored a Constitutional Law textbook that has now been translated into Tetum and Portuguese. I'm a published author...in a small country by Indonesia. When we weren't in meetings, the four of us found the time to drive a bit east towards Baucau while listening to Phantom Planet on loop. I know the picture below is overexposed, but I like how the sunset makes the horizon look like the ocean is dimpled and swirling away into a giant drain.

While having squid kabobs on the beach by the light of the cooking fires and playing with the many scruffy dogs that wander among the stalls, we talked about how it was unlikely we'd be back. The flights to Dili used to be once a week, but now are twice a week and still packed with development folk.

I loved running along the beach in the morning and paying a fisherman a few bucks to take us out on the ocean to see the perfect reefs they still have, having a beer on top of a bat-infested lighthouse that overlooks the coastline, and just walking among the strange roots of a mangrove tree along a pristine white beach. Gorging myself on the breakfast fruit was a delight in the mornings, as was playing Indian poker in an Australian bar overlooking the ocean. I turned on Grindr just for shits and giggles once, and aside from the one other Gay in the Village (Australian) who I'd seen running in the mornings too, the closest gay folk (with smartphones) were in Darwin, Australia, some six hundred miles away.

I spent a while trying to track down some areca nut and betel leaf before the two of us who were interested came across it a few hours before our flight out of Dili. Apparently the Timorese consider it a low-class lady's activity, so it was generally confusing why we would want some of this. The combination of areca nut slices, betel leaf, and lime creates a bright red juice in your mouth that stains EVERYTHING and also gives you a quick stimulant kick. I was awful at the process, burning myself with the lime, drooling red juice on my shirt, and not getting much of the kick (around three minutes of jittery feelings). 

I then spent about twenty minutes brushing my teeth to no avail and it wasn't until we got to Singapore that I didn't have pink teeth. We debated briefly whether or not it would be okay to take a betel leaf home with us since the Singaporeans just don't play when it comes to drug smuggling.