The Lost Boy

Dili's car horn shenanigans

You can tell that people in Timor-Leste have a sense of sense of humour just by listening to the wide variety of car horns that people have. Not content with a simple beep, the Timorese have all manner of interesting horn styles, some of which are so distracting that I end up stopping my bicycle just to see what's going on.

Some horns start off with a regular beep followed by a series of successive beeps decreasing in volume until the beep is no more. It sounds kind of like a beep driving off into the distance beyond the horizon, when in fact the car responsible is right next to you.

The ones that get me every time are the tuneful horns, which blast out a quick melody of beeps, sometimes followed by a successive series of quieter melodies. You'd think the circus had come to town, but it's usually just a microlet (like a tiny breadbin of a minibus) looking for passengers.

Some guys have gone the whole hog and made their cars into spaceships by making their horns sound like lasers. The whole thing is just so ridiculous that you have to laugh. Nobody has a clue what's going on with the diverse assortment of beeping styles. I never know whether I'm coming or going or who is beeping at who and for what.

If there were more cars on the road, like in Bangkok, this place would be chaos. As it is, most people don't really know how to drive and so the average speed of a car in Dili seems to be only about 40kmh.

I hope to goodness that Dili doesn't become like Bangkok in terms of traffic; there would be thousands of accidents every day. You should see some of the manoeuvres the UN vehicles pull.