Customer Reviews

East Timor (Lonely Planet East Timor)

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There are not many frontiers left for international travelers who want to explore new and exotic settings, experience a new culture, and do it without encountering hordes of others with the same purpose in mind. This guide to East Timor, or Timor-Leste as it is now called, will help you do just that.

Part of the fascination of Timor Leste is the saga of its emergence as an independent country. This guide includes a remarkable summary of a wide range of historical, political, and social information about the country (as well as the standard tourist data) that helps set the context for what you will see there. The rudimentary Tetum language section at the end would be an indispensable supplement to the 'how to get there' and 'what you will see' information. I was amazed to find new information about areas that I had visited several times, and thought I knew about.

For best results - read at least one of the supplementary books on Timor history that is suggested. An even longer listing would be useful (maybe in the next edition!).

I spent 3 weeks in Timor Leste back in 2005 while I was working for the UN. Now that most UN personnel have moved out, there some restaurants that no longer exist, as well as hotels. I was inspired by this book to take a trip to an Eco-Resort in Atauro... it was amazing!! I highly recommend this book if you are planning to go to the World's Newest Nation.

Kudos to Lonely Planet for publishing this guide to this recently independent destination, which is now just losing its reputation as a risky and potentially violent (formerly) Indonesian enclave. It reads well, and I believe it will be a glowing advertisement for this new country, which deserves international attention from the tourism community.

While Lonely Planet is to be commended for publishing a guide to East Timor, its coverage of language issues leaves something to be desired.

The guide ignores the fact that before the Indonesian invasion, the national language, Tetum (not 'Tetun') co-existed happily with Portuguese, and derived a considerable amount of its vocabulary from it. This is reflected in the Tetum phrases listed, so it is ironic that the guide is so dismissive about Portuguese as the 'least sensible choice'. (The sloppy misspelling of Portuguese names, often transliterated as Spanish ones, is another case in point.)

It remarks that 'apart from a few pleasantries, you're unlikely to need much Portuguese in East Timor'. Leaving aside whether this is true or not, is there any need for such a snide remark? You are unlikely to need much Welsh in Wales, or Basque in the Basque Country, but it won't do any harm if you learn a bit. In any event, most of the pleasantries in Tetum like, 'bondia' for 'hello', 'obrigadu' for 'thank you', 'kolisensa' for 'excuse me', etc, are derived from Portuguese anyway!

On the inside cover, the Tetum paragraph stating that Lonely Planet doesn't accept money or freebies for favourable coverage is so heavily Portuguese-influenced, you might overlook the fact that they didn't write it in Portuguese as well.

The two main daily newspapers, Timor Post and Suara Timor Lorosae, are in Tetum as well as Indonesian, not 'mainly in Indonesian but with some news in Portuguese and English'.

For the record, while both Tetum and Portuguese are official languages, both Indonesian and English are recognised as 'working languages, to be used for as long as is necessary'.

In contrast to Indonesia, whose governments have marginalised regional languages (not even Javanese has official status in Indonesia) and even banned ethnic minority ones (like Portuguese in East Timor as well as Chinese in Indonesia itself), East Timor's language policy seems quite enlightened and pragmatic.