Stephen and I are here. After over a year of thinking about East Timor, we’ve finally arrived. It was a glorious flight from Darwin, with the sun just coming up and reflecting on the water. For the first time I could understand how, in such a small country, the Resistance could remain hidden from the Indonesians and wage a guerilla war for 24 years. Timor is an island with a high ridge running down the middle, with steep slopes on either side and almost totally covered in trees. Dili is on the side of the island opposite Darwin on a small coastal plain.<\/p>\n
The airport is tiny, little more than a big hangar and a stretch of tarmac. Simon met us and took us to our hotel. It’s a great little place with a massive terrace covered with a thatched roof and furnished with wicker sofas and chairs with lovely soft cushions. There is a road between the hotel and the beach which is a narrow stretch of white sand, fringed by coconut trees. Somehow I hadn’t realised that this was a tropical island. I’m hoping to find a few spare hours to sit on the terrace with a cool drink and watch the world go by.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stephen and I are here. After over a year of thinking about East Timor, we’ve finally arrived. It was a glorious flight from Darwin, with the sun just coming up and reflecting on the water. For the first time I could understand how, in such a small country, the Resistance could remain hidden from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spenditwell.com\/updates\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spenditwell.com\/updates\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spenditwell.com\/updates\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spenditwell.com\/updates\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spenditwell.com\/updates\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.spenditwell.com\/updates\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"https:\/\/www.spenditwell.com\/updates\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spenditwell.com\/updates\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spenditwell.com\/updates\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spenditwell.com\/updates\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}