After Bali, West Timor felt like another country. There were no tourists; locals were genuinely curious about us aliens. There were zero signs of sightseeing points, no advertisements of tours or travel agencies. Just local life with kids shouting “Hello Mister!” from all the corners and hoping to shake your hand (something we did thousands of times per day). We had learnt some Indonesian before arrival. In most cases, at least one person was speaking some English. Though surprisingly speaking with pupils, it felt like their English lessons finish with those two legendary words “Hello Mister!”. Woman, or man, the same greeting. Sometimes it was funny to see those probably more advanced pupils getting frozen in front of me and obviously trying to remember what is the word for the woman, but in the end, they did not bother and went for “Hello Mister!”. The bravest pioneers sometimes added “how old are you?”, and then the whole group was bursting into laughters; when we responded a word, another laugh.

Starting from Kupang, and not at all in Bali or Flores. I started to recognise Indonesia I have read about. Locals were extremely curious, always wanted to interact, even with the lack of common language. I find Indonesians very proud of their country, and happy to see some foreigners exploring it outside the famous touristic spots.

Culturally it is regular and traditional in Indonesia to meet and greet a new person with lots of personal questions. Like pupils did not ask “how are you?”, they went for “how old are you?”, other regular questions would be “what is your job? are you married? how many kids do you have? what is your religion? what is your work? how much do you earn?”. The last was not so often, but all the rest was heard many times. Before entering the country, we agreed with Adriano that not having kids at our age (above 30) is shocking enough, so let’s stick with “we are married and Christian” (back then we were engaged but not officially married, and we are not religious).

Indonesia is such a mix of religions, I don’t think anybody would have a problem with whatever religion you are, but it is an important part of everyone’s identity. No religious is the same as a person without a surname. You would get the same question again and again, because the only explanation possible is that you did not understand the question. Regarding the marriage, again it would very weird to explain how a couple can travel together, live together for years and not be married. I am not sure if that applies to foreigners, but we heard about it, and actually saw in the list of a few hotel rules that it is not permitted to non-married couple stay in the same room. However, I want to add, that though it might sound as a very conservative country, it is rather cultural traditions. General atmosphere is very relaxed and even on very Muslim islands there is nothing to worry about. Women not necessarily wear scarfs, they work and walk alone, it is not extreme at all.

The legend of Kupang

Nowadays Kupang probably would not look any special for most people, but it was for Adriano. Passionate about the Bounty story, he dreamed to see the harbour where captain William Bligh sailed in an open boat in 1789. Unfortunately, even locals do not know those interesting facts about their history. Neither that during Dutch and Portuguese Colony times this island was considered to be the edge of the world.

The mutiny on the Bounty ship was told in books and a few movies: after being forced to leave his Bounty ship around Tonga and crossed thousands of kilometres in an open-boat, captain Blight with a few hardly alive crew members arrived at the harbour of Kupang. This is that harbour how it looks today, symbolically coloured by a bright red sunset that evening when we saw it.

A few stories from our visit of Kupang

Fish market

We walked around looking for where to eat dinner and ended up in the fish market, which differently to other markets, opens in the evening and people come there not just for shopping but to eat dinner too. Kupang is quite modern city, with internet, shops and cars around, but old tradition to eat with hands is still valid. In fish market, a big family in front of us were eating everything, fish, and rice with some sauce included with bare hands.

With the plan ahead to hop through many islands, I was dreaming to eat grilled fresh fish every day for the next months. Little did I know that on many islands (surprise, surprise!) there is no tradition to fish or to grill fish, and it was very hard to find fresh fish overall. It is something difficult for me to understand, as my thought would be – rich, poor, whatever it is, the island is surrounded by fish which is free, so just get it, put it on fire, and a perfect dish is done. However, the reality is, that many, even the poorest islands, prefer to import frozen tasteless chicken and fry it in old oil. This is considered to be cool. And even when fish is found, it is very common to boil the entire fish in oil too. Only in a few places like Kupang, Atambua and on Owi island people were grilling my favourite Pacific island dish.

So in the end, what I thought to be our first grilled fish for many to come, was one of the greatest dinners we had and dreamed of for many following days and islands (not just in Indonesia).

Indonesian smoothies (street food)

Another similar story was about the mango, avocado or soursop (a fruit from that region) smoothies with sweetened condensed milk. We thought to open the season of these great Indonesian smoothies, but the next time we saw them, was weeks after and during that time we just shared fantasy of how great Indonesian smoothies are.

Soursoup (in Indonesian “sirsak”) is the big green fruit on the left. The pink fruit nearby is called dragon fruit. We saw many of those also in Bangkok.