Exploring Timor-Leste

Hot springs, rice fields, and historic sights in beautiful Bobonaro

• Jonty • Episode 22

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Jonty:

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 is on the beautiful municipality of Bobin Naro. This is at the Western end of Timor-Leste, bordering with Indonesian West Timor. Some of the best known sites in Bobin include BBO and historic site, where in 1975 journalists were killed by the invading Indonesian army. It's main city. Malana is one of the largest in the country. The ROA Hot Springs are an interesting destination for the adventurous, and it's one of the best places in two more less agencies scenic rice fields, particularly around ABA and Malana. From Dili, head west along the coastal road and then head into barro. It is a very scenic drive and it is a generally well maintained road up to the Indonesian border. It then starts heading inland and gets significantly rougher. So a four wheel drive vehicle or some skills a motorbike would be recommended for exploring past bbo. There's about half an hour of bad road to BBO itself. So that is doable on a scooter. Now BBO is home to the second oldest fort in Timor less day, which is over 350 years old. The fort was built by the Portuguese to protect during the ongoing power struggle with the Dutch. Over the control of this part of Southeast Asia the fort has now been converted into one of the best places to stay in the country. It has good food and an infinity pool, which I think is the only infinity pool in Timor, and it offers beautiful views around the surrounding landscape. It's also home to the BBO Veterans Museum, a small but very informative museum that opened in 2022. Highly recommend visiting if you're in bbo. Now. Across the road from the fort is the BBO flag house. This is named for the Australian flag painted on the outside. This was home to five journalists, so two Australians, two position in New Zealander who were in Timor less day, or then East Timor in 1975 to report on the attacks on the border to West Timor. In East Timor. When the Indonesian army invaded, they were murdered and their murders were covered up by senior soldiers. It took years for the truth to come out, and no one has ever been charged for their murder. A flag House is now a, it's a small museum. It's a community center, it has a shop, a coffee store, and a learning center Just by the fault. And the flag house is also the LaRay statue, which was a statue of a local ruler built during the Indonesian occupation. In the base of the statue monument is the number 27, as the Indonesians considered Timor Lesse to be their 27th province. BBO also has an attractive church at the western end of town. Outside is a rather large, I love BBO sign, which is quite photogenic. And then if you head into the outskirts of bbo, there's a impressive manmade cave with a statue of the Virgin Mary. And then on the hill above, there's a statue of Jesus on the cross and expansive views of the BBO area. And to reach that you walk past 14 stations of the cross. There is a natural griner. So Griner means cave. Many of the ones in Virgin Mary are manmade for the Virgin Mary and the cave. There's a natural caves close to Balbo, which are home to static tights and bats. Are only about 2K from bbo, but they're very hard to find as I tried. You really need a local guide to show you around. Now, the drive to Babbo is very scenic, and one of my favorite spots along the way was the town of abi. Now, when you first drive through it, it may not be obvious what there is in Abi, but if you stop and take a little bit of time, there's some fantastic scenes to be had. So you don't really notice it from the road. But when you're driving, say south on your left hand side, there are actually huge rice fields. The best place to see those is from the rooftop of the D two Uma Cafe, which is an excellent cafe. They've got really good drinks and some food, and they've got a nice viewing area deck on top of the cafe, which has fantastic views of the rice fields. It's really highly recommend stopping there for a beverage and the view. And then to your right hand side, as you're driving through Aaba, you can't see it from the road necessarily, but there is a really impressive stretch of beach and there are a few beach access points. It's a good place to break up your journey if you're heading through into Bob and Arrow. And the main town in Bobro and one of the largest cities in Timor Le State is Malana. The road to Malana is being worked on, but it is pretty rough still. You basically go up and over the hills, through bbo and then down the other side and across to Malana. It's a large agricultural hub, particularly for rice production, and there's some beautiful rice fields in Central Malana. It's quite a spread out city. It's best explored with your own transport as they seem to be surprisingly few Mette or Tom Toms compared to other places I visited in Timor-Leste. But as I say, there are beautiful rice fields. Probably the best viewing point is if you take the back row that goes between the Protestant Church, which is a bright yellow church through round the back of the city center, then there's some really good views that way. There's also an impressive Santa Cruz Catholic Church, which has a huge outdoor covered area at the eastern end of Malana. And nearby is the main cemetery, which has fantastic views of Mount Lacol now Lacol, it's probably one of the most prominent mountains in Bob, you get a great view of it from Malana. Facing towards it. And as you head through further into Bob Arrow, you get a real view of it's side on, and it's a really jagged edge mountain. It's only 2000 meters tall. It looks absolutely terrifying. I know local guides, they used to take people up there and now they've stopped taking people as there are a number of fatalities, which is understandable when you look at the terrain on offer. Malana is quite a nice place to walk around. The people are very friendly. They don't see a lot of tourists there. It's a very kind of welcoming experience. Malana is at least three and a half hours drive from Dili. And then a further, probably one and a half to two hours further on from Malana are the Morobo hot springs. So they're not the easiest place to get to, but they are the best known hot springs in the country. They're originally developed by the Portuguese who had a resort complex built around the pools, but they fell into disrepair in 2016. The whole complex was redeveloped. But not a lot of maintenance appears to have taken place since then. They're fed by natural hot spring water, which produces around 2000 liters of water per minute. There is three pools, which are kind of part of the complex, and there's this amazing kind of cascading waterfall of hot water just by them. And then if you actually go through a bit of an explore in the bush, maybe 10, 15 minutes away, you can get down to the river where you can see more of the natural hot springs. Now they are quite amazing hot springs. But as I said, there hasn't been a lot of maintenance. There's not a lot of facilities there. The toilets are out of action. A lot of the infrastructure has fallen into disrepair. So they are definitely an adventure tourist destination. Other than some local kids, you're probably gonna have the place to yourself. The other well-known place in Bobo is Battle, which is the home to the main border crossing between Tim Leste and Indonesia. Although there isn't much there apart from the border, there are the remains of a 1655 Portuguese fort. But they're now occupied by the border police, so you can't go inside them. But you can see the walls from the outside on the road between there and Bbo. There are many traditional Timorese thatch buildings, including Uma Luli. Bob is probably one of the most varied and scenic municipalities. I think in Timor Lesso, I did a fantastic hike from Bob and Arrow through into a mirror, and there's some stunning scenery, but it's not the easiest to access. Once you get beyond the coastal road, as I say, the quality of the roads can be quite variable. The easiest place as a tourist to visit is bbo and there is definitely enough to there to fill up a day. There are BBO trails and BBO for hotel can organize guys to do walks around the area. There's a mountain biking route you can do. And then there's bigger hikes further up into the mountains in bbo. So hopefully that's giving you a bit of a flavor for the municipality of Bobro.

Jonty:

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.