That way, irregular readers, you won’t do what we did. And, regular readers, you are spared another whiny blog post.

1: Get Visa Permission. Don’t Do It Online.

Since early 2010, you need written permission to cross the land border between Indonesia and Timor Leste. The overland crossing from West Timor (Indonesia) to East Timor is no longer a straightforward visa on arrival unless you’re a Portuguese or Indonesian citizen.

Now, it might appear — not least from the Timor Leste government’s own website — that it’s possible to arrange a Timor Leste visa online.

But after twelve unanswered emails to different Timor Leste government departments and six phone calls to immigration, all of which ended with the gentleman on the other end hanging up, I’d recommend you cut to the chase, spare your blood pressure and pop in to an East Timor consulate, either in Bali or Kupang (the capital of Indonesian West Timor), and arrange your East Timor visa there.

As a Twitter friend put it, “The Timorese government does not use email.” As the consulate put it, “Ah! No internet.” (For six weeks.)

2: Get Your Visa Permission in Kupang. It’s Painless.

The Timor Leste consulate in Kupang is on Jalan El Tari, near the governor’s mansion. Show up with a passport photo, a photocopy of your passport and a good attitude and they’ll turn your East Timor visa application round in three working days (if you’re coming from Flores, the boat leaves Ende on Mondays at 7am).

Don’t bother bringing the form you filled in for your online visa application, or downloading it, for that matter. You’ll need to fill a different Timor Leste visa application out.

Three working days later, the consulate will issue you with a printout, your authority to be issued an East Timor visa at the border. You’ll need to pay the fee ($30) in US dollars (the currency, with centavos, of Timor Leste) at the Indonesia-Timor border: that’s between Mota’in (also spelt Mota’ain and Mota Ain) and Batugade.

3: Change Money At The Border.

You need US dollars for East Timor. Despite what Visa and Mastercard’s websites will tell you, there are (ANZ) ATMs and banks in Dili, but you’ll need cash for the Timor Leste visa fee and to see you through to Dili. Obviously, your best bet is to bring dollars from home.

Failing that? Don’t change money in Indonesia. Not in Kefa. Not even in the border town of Atambua. And definitely not with the guys who hang out at the Indonesian border post in Mota’in.

Once you’re through Indonesian police and immigration, and waiting your turn at Indonesian customs, there’s a Mandiri bank bang on the Timor Leste border offering the best rupiah-dollar rates I’ve seen in Indonesia.

If you panicked and changed in Atambua, you’ll feel as stupid as I did. Don’t even *think* about changing in Kefa.

I’ve been told in a couple of banks that it’s not yet possible to take dollars out on a credit card at any Indonesian bank. If I’m wrong, drop me a comment.

4: Got Your Own Wheels? Go Through Poo-Poo.

Don’t ask for directions to Mota’in in Atambua. Follow the sign to Atapupu (Poo-poo, to the locals): when you hit the coast, follow the sign to Mota’in. If you have your own wheels, you’ll need to go there anyway.

There is a direct road to Mota’in. Unless you actively like bouncing over wavy corrugations into oncoming pickups taking up the entire road, heading down 1 in 3 gradients with the brakes on hard or biking over loose rocks, it’s best avoided.

The road to Poo-Poo, on the other hand, is virtually paved with gold. Go there. And go early. Because…

5: Got Indonesian Plates? You Need A “Sticker”.

If you’re driving a vehicle with Indonesian plates, you can’t take it across the East Timor border without documentation. The police at Mota’in will stop you before you get to the Timor Leste border, and, as both sides check your documentation several times, this is not a situation where bribery will help (unless, I guess, you’re a syndicate running vehicles across the Indonesia-Timor border in bulk).

To get your “sticker”, head down the nice, fast road to the port of Atapupu (Poo-Poo). Better yet, go there in the first place, like I told you. You’ll need a copy of the Blue Book, a copy of your license (international or Indonesian), a copy of your STNK (the plastic wrapped driver ID you get with every hire vehicle) and a copy of your passport. Best to bring copies with you as the copy shop on the border tends to run out of paper or break.

Only got your home country license? Here’s how to get an Indonesian driving license.

Go to customs, down a turnoff just past the port. They don’t speak English, but if you don’t speak even pidgin Indonesian they’ll still try and help. They’ll process your paperwork for free and give you four copies of a piece of paper. Check the details are correct, and that it’s stamped and signed by the guy who gives them out. They’re quick and very nice.

If you’ve hired a vehicle to cross from Indonesia to East Timor, your best bet is to get written permission from the owner to take it across the border and a copy of the Blue Book. Good luck with that, sucker.

6: The Border Closes At 4. Allow A Lot Of Time.

It is possible to get from Kefa, Indonesia, to Dili, East Timor, in a day (the roads are surprisingly good). But the border formally closes at 4pm Indonesian time, 5pm Timor Leste time. In practice you need to be there at 3.30pm Indonesian time to have a chance of crossing the border.

If you have your own wheels, you need to process your “sticker” with the police at Mota’in. They’ll take your STNK as security, take a few of your forms and give you some more in return. You need to show this to the next lot of police, the ones at the actual border, a hundred metres down the road, who will write down a bunch of stuff.

You then need to clear immigration, who will need to see your Timor Leste visa authorisation, and show your vehicle paperwork again at customs. You’ll need to repeat the same trinity on the East Timor side of the border, with more paperwork.

Timorese customs will probably search your bags for the hell of it and, if you’re travelling with a vehicle, will take some of your paperwork and give you a new piece.

Should you spend many minutes watching policemen fill out forms in triplicate and biro, and have to return to Atambua to spend the night, as we did, there are several accommodation choices. Avoid the one that has a Timorese wedding, unless you want to be up all night listening to the Indo equivalent of “Come On Eileen!” and marvelling at the slutty bridesmaid dresses.

7: Overstayed Your Visa? Don’t Sweat It. Much.

Good news! For the moment, at least, if you’ve got a few days overstay on a visa at this particular border, the Indonesian government won’t get medieval on your ass. It costs 200,000 rupiah per day overstayed, and, I figure, from our experience, they’re used to folk who hit visa hassles.

Your East Timor visa? It’s a disappointingly matter-of-fact stamp in your passport.

8: In A Hurry to Get to Dili? Leave Early.

There’s not much by way of accommodation apart from palm huts on the East Timor side of the border for an hour or two, depending how fast you drive.

The coast road to Dili is not in bad nick, considering a) the decades of war and b) that this is the poorest country in South-East Asia. Still, ignore all the people in West Timor who tell you it takes two hours from the Indonesian border to Dili. The Timorese say three and a half. When we drove, they were still building part of it.

9: Coming Back? Get A New Visa.

You’ll need a visa to cross overland from Timor Leste to Indonesia, which you can get from the embassy in downtown Dili. I’ll let you know how that goes, but I’m cautiously optimistic.

EDIT!!!!

Forewarned is forearmed. It took us four visits to get our 60-day Indonesian visa from the embassy in Dili, Timor Leste, but you can do it in two. Here’s how. (The process is the same for a 30-day Indonesia visa.)

The Indonesian embassy in East Timor, one block back, and one block before, the Chinese Embassy, is open for visa applications from 9-12am. To have your visa application seen, however, you need to get there at 8am and receive your number.

What do you need? Refreshingly, neither proof of funds nor a return ticket nor a sponsor. Just a photocopy of your passport, a passport photo on the classic Indonesian red background, a *black* biro (not fibre tip), US$45 and the willingness to handwrite an application letter (they have templates). You can get the photos done in many places in Dili — we went for Pas Foto, near the ANZ cashpoint a block back from Hotel Dili.

Turnaround time is three working days, and you pick up in the afternoons. If you have an overstay on your old Indonesian visa, the attache will personally decide whether you are allowed a 60 day Indonesian visa, or only a 30 day — we got a 60-day Indonesia visa in Timor Leste, no problem, despite a couple of days overstay.

The post How to Cross from Indonesia to Timor Leste Overland appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

Just to watch the birds she loved. And still loves today.

“I don’t worry too much about men,” she says. “I have nieces. I take them shopping. I don’t buy them too many things, you understand. Not too much. My last relationship? Thirteen years ago. Too much hard work…”

We’ve walked with Su, Z, Brooks, Stu and I, through the fields close to Campuhan Bridge, in the west of Ubud, a place where the town performs one of its perplexing jump-shifts from traffic-clogged tourist mecca to rural tranquillity.

A main road choked with scooters and people carriers, restaurant signage almost obscuring the temples, touts offering “transport” side by side with men in checkered sarongs and neat head-dresses progressing to ceremonies, heads down into a green and tranquil landscape that seems unchanged for centuries.

It’s birds that are Su’s thing, though. For the last 17 years or so she’s worked with Victor Mason, a Brit whose stellar eccentricities made him a legend even by the rarefied standards of early Bali expats, guiding folk through the countryside on the Bali Bird Walk.

She knows researchers and ornithologists all over the Indonesian archipelago. Her rapier vision spots everything from spiders to swiftlets, egrets, eagles…

We’ve seen seven or eight different species, clustered in palm trees, frangipani, on power cables, before we even leave main street. Not to mention this charming lady spider, awaiting coitus with her minuscule mate, after which, his biological destiny fulfilled, he becomes dinner.

We wind up a steep paved road, which turns into one of those narrow paths which function, for Balinese scooter drivers, as super-highways across the flooded landscape. Su exclaims and we fumble with binoculars.

A Javanese kingfisher, his breast a flash of Technicolor blues, squats on a post in the rice paddy, waiting for frogs and eels, making a mockery of the unfurled plastic bags that flutter like prayer flags on the bamboo poles in lieu of scarecrows.

Javan pond herons strut pompously behind a man turning the clay soil by hand, sulphurous heads pecking for worms, eels and leeches. There are more birds now than when Su was a child, she explains, because fewer people hunt them.

Dragonflies whirl over one of the rushing channels that line the way. A bird of prey hovers malevolently over fluttering swiftlets. An elderly lady bathes, bare-breasted and unselfconscious, in the turbid water that rushes down from the heights.

Z stops to watch a man opening up a channel from the ditch that runs by the path into his family field. “Who builds these channels?” I ask. For all its serene beauty, this intensively farmed landscape is one of the most engineered agricultural environments on earth.

“It’s the rice farmers association,” Su explains. “Since the 1600s, each village has their rice farmers’ association. Everyone in the association votes for people who manage the water. And we always, always vote for the people who have the fields at the bottom. Maybe if someone is not a good person, we’ll vote for their neighbour. But we vote for the people who have the lowest fields because they will make sure that all the fields get water.”

The rice farmers associations each have their own temple – and meeting places, within the fields. We stop at one, complete with a map, that divides up the land into a patchwork of tiny strips, each stepped at back-breaking effort slightly above or below its neighbour.

“The rice farmers association decides when people must sow rice,” Su explains. “Each family has to farm their fields, or they will be fined. And they cannot sell their land, unless they need the money to save a life. The land belongs to our ancestors. And if we build on it, the ancestors will be angry.”

Rice farming requires immense cooperation between neighbours. There’s only a low mud wall between adjoining paddy fields, which is opened or closed with a mattock to control the levels of water in the fields.

At some stages of its growth cycle, rice needs ample water. At other times, the young shoots thrive in simple sticky clay. Releasing water from your own field could wash your neighbour’s work away.

Even today, the farmers team together to excavate tunnels and channels to carry the water that floods from the heavens. I wonder how many of the streams that run in deep ravines through the landscape began at the level they occupy now and how many are the product of centuries of managed evolution, as old as ancient hedgerows.

Because for all Ubud’s status as a mecca for visitors, the traditions and rituals of local life hold very, very strong. Not just because children still trap dragonflies for fun or suck the delicious nectar of the sleeping hibiscus flower.

For every Western Eat Pray Lover practising yoga, seeking out Buddhism or finding traditional healers, there is a Balinese village still governed by ancient rituals, worship of gods and appeasement of demons and ancestors, where teeth are ritually filed as you come of age and children are named according to the order in which they were born.

How traditional is society?

“There are three different Balinese languages,” Su (Wayan “Firstborn” Sumadi, in full) explains. “The low caste language, the medium language, and the high language. Because I am sudra, the lowest caste, I don’t speak the other languages too well. If I go to the Palace, I have to apologise for not speaking their language.”

Movement between Bali’s three castes is easier than it was, Su explains. “It is easier to become a Brahman now. You can do it by getting rich. But still, if I am sudra and married to a high-caste man, and I am pregnant, I cannot eat the offerings from my temple.”

By a statue of Siwa, skulls crushed below his feet, aged to agelessness by the moss that grows so fast here, Su tells us a complicated tale of black magic, death and resurrection. At Murni’s Warung she enthuses about the health-giving qualities of unhusked “red” rice.

And, as we return home, a turmeric shoot which Su has dug for us tucked for safe-keeping in a water bottle, edible leaves and medicinal herbs bulging from Z’s pockets, I’m amazed once again at her knowledge of her country.

The Bali Bird Walk runs on Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, or other days by arrangement.