The lobby bar at Hotel Timor in Dili is a strange place. For whatever reason, it’s full of people from morning until night. It’s the place where everybody goes to have meetings. At any one time you could walk in and sit down next to the UN, UNPOL, the GNR, IOM and so on.

I’m certain that if you could understand all of the languages being spoken in Hotel Timor’s lobby bar, you would know all of Timor-Leste’s secrets. The people in the lobby bar look very important. They’re all neatly dressed with tidy hair. They sip on espressos, jabber away on cellphones and pull out from their bags great slabs of documents and notes.

The reason why, from time to time, I visit the lobby bar at Hotel Timor is because it’s where people often suggest I meet them for interviews. I was there just this morning. It’s a neutral setting, although it’s usually rather noisy what with the clatter of voices emanating from all corners.

Almost everybody smokes, especially the European women. Some day I’ll pluck up the courage to go round to every table and ask each person who he or she is and what they are talking about.

The reason why this is all so odd is because it’s like a centralized pocket of expatism. I imagine there is somewhere similar to this in every developing country in the world. Whenever I'm at Hotel Timor I can't help but think of the novel A Sunday At The Pool In Kigali by Gil Courtemanche. Sometimes I think of Burmese Days by George Orwell.

Hotel Timor is Dili’s most famous, most expensive and most overrated hotel. The food isn’t particularly inspiring and the standards aren’t especially high, but this is where people choose to hang out.