Exploring beautiful and historic Liquiçá

Exploring the historic and beautiful municipality of Liquiçá.

More information on Liquiçá - https://exploringtimor.com/liquica/

Website - www.exploringtimor.com

TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@exploringtimor

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@ExploringTimorLeste

Books - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D82D3TBJ

Transcript

Jonty: 0:06

Bondi. Welcome to exploring Tim Este, the podcast that talks about Southeast Asia's best kept travel secret. I'm your host Jte, and I'll share firsthand insights, expert interviews and practical travel tips. Whether you're a traveler, a cultural lover, or just curious about places rarely covered in the mainstream. You're in the right place. Let's explore two more. Less day. Today's episode I'm gonna talk about Liisa, which is one of the easiest municipalities to get to from Dili. It is just to the west, you probably think you're still in Dili, but when you drive past Dili Rock, you've entered into Laar. So Laar is both beautiful and historic. It has very nice beaches. There's some impressive hills inland, and there's quite a few historic sites to visit. You could probably see most things in Laar within a day if you had your own transport and once you escaped the DLI traffic, a scooter or a two wheel drive car. We'll be fine to explore the roads of laa. So let's talk about some of the sites and places you can visit in the, this won't be quite in the order you do, if you drive out of dili, but more in the kind of order of which ones I think are the best ones to visit as a tourist. So the first site is the Aplo Prison, this is about 40 minutes drive west of Dili. So this is a prison that was built by the Portuguese in the late 19th century, and they expanded in 1914. And it was used to house criminals and political prisoners from across the Portuguese Colonial Empire at the time, which included places as far away as Macau, and it was an operation until just before the second World War. It was a site of torture and common mistreatment of prisoners, including mixing broken glass in with inmates food, and apparently Apolo means bitter water, which refers to the abuses that took place there during World War ii. The Japanese used it as a command center before it fell into disrepair. In 2012, the site was restored, and it is probably one of the only sites in Timor-Leste that has informative, information panels for tourists. So there's maybe half a dozen panels around the site, which explain the history and what you're seeing. Hopefully there'll be more other sites in Timor, less estate to come, but at the moment this is a bit of a novelty. They did plan to build a museum, a shop, and a restaurant, but as of 2025, they don't exist. But it is still an atmospheric and a relatively easy place to visit for those interested in historic sites. And there's actually quite a nice beach, the prison is. Pretty much built by the beach. As with many of the municipalities in Timor Day, there is a town which has the same name as the municipality, so is the largest town in the municipality. It's home to about 5,000 people. So it's a pretty small town by most places, standards, but it's very large by Timor standards. And there's quite a few historic sites around. The town, but in varying degrees of disrepair may not be that easy to find. The town was very heavily damaged by the Indonesians when they left in 1999. They had very much a scorched earth policy when they left, and it was a site of some of the most notorious events of that period. So April the sixth, 1999, up to 200 Timorese were massacred by the Indonesian militia as they sheltered in a priest's house next to the main church. The bodies of many of the victims were disposed of in Lake Uba, which I'll come on to a bit later. The church has been restored and quite extensively expanded. I noticed when I was flying my drone in the area that there's a shrine to the Ver and Mary on top of one of the neighboring buildings to the church. So you could only really see it from the air. It was slightly unexpected, but yeah, it's just to the left. If you're looking directly towards the church, opposite. The church is the well maintained park deza, and that has various monuments and statues and the attractive form of residence of the colonial administrative. Laar is also across the road from the park and was restored recently in 2023. When you first enter the town on the eastern end, there is a colorful memorial to a hero of the Timorese independence movement with blue tiled steps leading up to a painted bust. These are quite common sites throughout Timor-Leste and then when you drive through Lakeside Town, it's not entirely obvious'cause the main road is set away back. But Adas has quite an attractive beachfront and there are a number of restaurants and hotels along there. Including Lahuta Beach Escape and Almar Dumar Resort. Which are popular places with particularly expats or Timor escaping dilly liquor size only about 50 minutes to an hour's drive, so it's easy to get outta town. It's much quieter than things in dilly. Heading further west from Ard Town is the town of Uba. This is about 50 kilometers west of Dilly, so maybe an hour and a quarter, hour and a half depending on road conditions. UBA has quite a lot of interest to explore. It's best known for the Dutch Fault, which was built in 1756, which was swapped with the Portuguese for the Island of Floris which is now in Indonesia in 1859. The impressive walls and a couple of canyons remain and inside are huge trees. And a late 20th century building home to a small local restaurant and handcraft store run by a local women's collective opposite. The main entrance there is also quite an extensive handcrafts market. A little bit further up the road is Mobar Church, which was built in the late 19th century Neoclassical style. There's quite an extensive cemetery, a bit further along, and if you head inland, which will require either a four-wheel drive or a motorbike,'cause the road's pretty rough. There's SSA de ra, which is a bit of a mouthful. Pos are typically, homes of important Portuguese colonial administrators, which have often been turned into hotels. And that's the plan with this Sada is to turn to a hotel, but it's currently in progress. And once you leave Mobar, there's not a lot, to be honest until we get to Aaba in Bob, although it is a scenic coastal road and it is one of the better roads in the country, as it is the main route between Dili and west Timor. Just to the east of Mobar is Lake Mobar. And this, although it has quite a tragic history, as I mentioned earlier as, Indonesian militia dumped bodies from the massacre there in 1999. Yeah, these days it is a very tranquil and peaceful place. There's a lot of seasonality. So during the wet season it can cover up to eight hectares. But during the dry season, it is significantly smaller. It's quite unusual. It's one of the larger lakes. In Timor less, 80, more, less. There has surprise in the few lakes, but it's very close to the coast. So basically you've got the lake, then you've got the road, and then you've got the coast and it's home to thousands of birds, including Australian pelicans and the occasional crocodile depending on when you visit. And the lake and the surrounding area has been identified as an important bird area. Although I have to say I've went there three times. I didn't see a lot of birds. I did hear some birds, and it's certainly quite a tranquil place to explore just by the lake is what looks like quite a nice little resort, which was actually set up with support from Korea in 2017. And they did a lot of work in terms of developing the site and planted lots of trees and they built these resort buildings. But unfortunately, it seems to have been abandoned. Due to a lack of anybody to run the place and when, when I visited last time, it was fenced up and seemingly abandoned. So this is something unfortunately you will see around Timor Este as things started with great intent and often with some overseas aid and funding. And then the sustainability is a real challenge to keep things going in Timor, just given the relatively low number of tourists, makes running a sustainable business quite challenging. And then Timor Estee can be challenging business environment in of itself. Now closer to Dili. There is a community run project at Kahu. Which is to protect and hatch sea turtles. So this is near Nia in, so maybe half an hour outside of Dili and your center can be visited and if you're lucky, you may get a tour and chance to see the turtles. But the best chance to see the turtles is they do a release of the hatchlings, the baby turtles. Releases usually happen from 5:00 PM one Saturday a month, and check out their Facebook page to see the details of when that will happen. even closer back to Dili, like literally across the bay from uh, where Dili ends is the Tbar Bay port. You can probably see this from the air when you come in on the plane, but certainly if you head west from Dili, you cannot. But it's noticed the very large port structure. So this was the largest infrastructure project in Timor Lester's history when it opened in September, 2022. And it replaced dilly port as the main port for the country. And it was the country's first public private partnership with a French group gaining a 30 year concession to build and operate the container port. As part of the concession for building the port, they did a lot of regeneration work on the nearby mangroves in Tbar, which was handed over to local community in 2024. Now there are extensive boardwalks. There must be at least 500 meters of boardwalk. There was a lot more boardwalk I was expecting when I walked into the place and it is a fascinating place to visit. And you can see there's lots and lots of crabs and there's interesting kind of wildlife living in the mangroves. So that is a very interesting site to see and it's relatively easy to access. You can get a Mik app to Tassie Tolu and then get a 50 cents Tom, Tom from Tassie Tolu to TBAR, and then you can walk around the mangroves. I think it's$1 entry for adults and it's open every day, normally from nine till seven. Now to get even more off the beaten track in Lita, if you head up into the hills, there is a small village called ba. Which is about 30 or 40 minutes drive inland from Aela. There is a road to it from ARD Town, but when I did it, it was under construction and it was absolutely terrifying to ride up very sandy and slippery. So if you're gonna do it, it's better to take the sealed road from Aela. You just head inland. There's only kind of one road, and that's home to a sizable church and shrine. And there's also a waterfall nearby. Now the road is sealed, but it is narrow and winding, but there are impressive views out across the coast from that. And it's obviously a bit cooler when you start getting up into the hills. Other than that, just has lots of nice beaches. So if you're just driving along the coastal road towards Bobro, you will see Almira Beach, which has beach huts. There's sandy bottom, which is good for snorkeling and diving. It's opposite the star concrete factory. That's your landmark lookout for. And it has an unexpectedly large number of public toilets, which is a rarity in Timor they're not necessarily very well maintained, but there's I know, 15 toilets there, which is more than you probably have in the entirety of some other municipalities. And then there's the beach by the prison, which I mentioned earlier. In Lakeside town itself, there's obviously a beach and then UBA has quite a nice beach opposite the historic fault where you can also go snorkeling and all those areas are generally free of crocodiles. I won't guarantee it, but you're pretty unlikely to see a crocodile there. So hopefully that's given you a bit of a flavor of what you can see and do in Liisa. Thank you so much for listening to exploring Timor Less Day. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please consider leaving a rating or review. It really helps more people discover the show. If you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you. Drop me an email at exploring Timor lessDay@gmail.com. Until next time, or Bodo ADEs.