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.

By Matt Crook and Domingos Fernandes (Voice of Culture)

DILI, EAST TIMOR: Disgruntled Timorese living in one of Dili’s camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) were told on Tuesday that the verification process that will allow many of them to return home will begin on Wednesday, although thousands more remain in IDP camps around the district.

For the full story please visit The Voice of Culture.

Among all the palaver of the past couple of weeks, every now and then I wonder what I’m really doing or what direction I’d like my life to take; when I arrived in Dili I had only vague aspirations with no idea whether they were too “out there”, even for me.

One afternoon last week, a girl from one of the local newspapers showed me a place where you can eat for a buck fifty. I’ve no idea what most of what I ate was, but there was chicken and it was deep fried to such an extreme that the bits you wouldn’t normally be able to eat became edible.

That one day was all about finding direction. I had a fear that I would arrive in East Timor, become a hobo or a full-time backpacker and never do anything besides bum around from place to place. Part of me would love to do that, forever, but I need something constructive to do or else I end up spending my time playing with toothpicks.

I had three meetings, if you can call them meetings: one was in a café, one in a restaurant and one, the most important, was a morning meet-up in a dusty yard with about ten people sat in a circle on plastic chairs, moving every few minutes as the sun pushed the shadows back farther. Before the meeting I’d spent half an hour goofing around with some kids in the yard of one of the local churches.

The meeting in the yard was with the staff of a small-time newspaper. Their office is just a dark shack and each of them volunteers his or her time, but (almost) every week on time, they produce a newspaper, half in Tetun, half in English. The passion these people have for producing the newspaper blew me away and to see what they create is amazing. It’s not perfect, but it’s something they’re proud off and can build on.

I sat down unsure what would come of the meeting; they bought me a can of Coke and laid on a spread of biscuits, offering me cigarettes and even presenting me with a traditional Timorese scarf that you hang around your neck equal on both sides. The whole meeting was videotaped and I had my picture taken a few times for an ID card and also for my “formal introduction” in the pages of the newspaper – I think.

For about an hour we talked about the paper and what direction they want to take it. We brainstormed and came up with ideas and plans for how we could make it better. I have nothing better to do so I’ve decided to offer some of my time to work with them. A native English speaker will open up new possibilities and I will have the chance to buddy up with local journalists and go around Dili and the rest of Timor-Leste on the hunt for stories.

It’s a great opportunity for me to learn about the country, to pick up the language, meet a lot of people and realize a lot of the ideas have been stumbling over each other in my head like drunken fools. Funding is a separate issue, but there are people here in Dili who can help and I now have access to the Internet when I need it, so I can make some bucks online in my spare time.

At the moment, from where I’m sat, it’s about as full-proof of a plan as I can possibly muster. I plan to set up an English-language website for the newspaper and begin to build up content, which will attract visitors and then catch the attention of advertisers.

I’m optimistic about this because the possibilities are endless and there are a lot of people here with great ideas.

That’s as good an answer as I can give to the question, What are you going to do in East Timor?

I have to hand it to the Thais; Suvarnabhumi International Airport is an impressive sight. Regardless of all the problems that came to plague the airport, it’s enormous and full of stuff. Perhaps you’re wondering what Dili Airport is like. As Timor-Leste is only a small country, the guys in Dili keep everything minimal.

Even in Dili, however, there are smiling Japanese tourists taking pictures and having a wild time of it. Timor-Leste welcomes all nationalities.

If this chap were here to welcome everyone to the airport, then the world would be a much better place. Unfortunately he was only there to keep an eye on me.

The airport is also home to a number of UN troops, who occasionally do training exercises in their helicopters.

For what the departure lounge may lack in size, it more than makes up for with its gigantic roof.

This is the VIP lounge.

When you arrive at most airports, there’s usually some confusion as to which luggage belt will be delivering your bags. No such worries exist in Dili as there is only one belt.

Airport staff are usually some of the gloomiest individuals on earth. Not so in Dili. Even the fellas in charge of the X-ray machine are having fun.

The airport is a good indication of what it’s like in Dili. The people are laidback, life is simple and there are smiles all around.

My first few days in Dili have passed by with lightning speed. My time has mostly been spent cycling around and getting a feel for the place. The heat is sweltering, perhaps even more so than in Phuket. The rainy season is due in a couple of months and I’m looking forward to seeing if the storms can match those I saw in Thailand.

I’ve yet to buy a sim card and so I haven’t been able to schedule any meetings with people in Dili, but there’s no rush. I’ve only been here a short time. The woman in charge of sim cards has been out each time I’ve been to the telecom shop, but I’m told she will be back at 8:15 tomorrow morning.

To give you an idea of how much things cost in Dili, a sim card is US$5. East Timor doesn’t have its own currency yet. It also doesn’t have many ATMs. There are three in the whole country, I’m told. A bottle of water off the street costs 25 cents, while a canned soft drink is usually 50 cents. An hour in the Internet shop was a couple of bucks, while meals so far have ranged from US$3 to US$10. I’m trying to keep my costs down at the moment, so when I’m on my own I mostly eat at the restaurants run by the Chinese, although a Chinese guy stung me for $6 for a plate of food and two cans of Coke today, so I won’t be visiting that particular restaurant again.

The beaches I’ve seen so far are nothing out of this world. Some are rocky, some are sandy. They’re all quiet and peaceful, however. I try and stay outside for most of the day and read, work or nap at night. One of the problems with living in East Timor is that the electricity cuts out regularly, so you often find yourself in darkness if your accommodation doesn’t have a generator.

Waking up every morning is easy enough thanks to the chorus of about 5,000 cockerels that erupts at daybreak, followed by 200 dogs going berserk and then about 10 million children with joy. Dili is not a place for late mornings, no matter how tired you are.

Aside from aid workers and the like, there aren’t many foreigners here. I see a few dotted around here and there, but there doesn’t seem to be many people visiting Dili for tourism, which is understandable given the low level of infrastructure and the volatility of the internal situation. East Timor isn’t an obvious place to visit.

There are people trying to kickstart a tourism mini-boom in East Timor, but I think the whole scene needs a lot of support from people with good ideas and people with money, who are not necessarily one and the same. The national park strikes me as an obvious draw and I’m hoping to see it for myself in the next couple of weeks.

There are NGOs working in Dili and teaching the locals English, among other things. The level of English in East Timor is, of course, incredibly low, but given time I don’t see why there couldn’t be companies here with local, English-speaking guides taking tourists on trips around the country, if there aren’t already.

If tourists are to start visiting East Timor, there needs to be a heck of a lot more information available on the Internet and in newspapers and magazines.

A visit to Dili at the moment is gritty experience. I wouldn’t call it fun, per se, but it’s gripping and it tells a story. Perhaps tourists would be interested in such a story.

For anyone who’s ever been to East Timor, it would be great to hear your thoughts on the place and how it might have changed since you visited. Would anyone else swap Thailand for East Timor.