I hired my own tour guide for the time I was in West Timor. So spent many a bumpy hour on the back of Jack's motorbike! We went up to the village of Baun one afternoon to see where they roast and smoke pork! They kill about 15 pigs each day here and hang them up on the ropes in the foreground. Then they are smoked in the wood burning oven in the background. Apparently people come from all over the Island to buy the pork! Unfortunately they had finished serving when we were there...

One day we went on an expedition into the mountains. We left Kupang at 6 a.m. and headed towards the town of Soe. They hold a market there for the region. It took three hours to get there on the back of the motorbike! These two ladies at the market had some really strange fruits for sale...The range of fresh fruit, vegtables and spices was just amazing. I'm not sure how many white tourists they see at this particular market - people kept coming up to me and touching me and the children just ran away crying - well, nothing new there then!

They don't just sell fruit and veg at the market - these two little pigs were for sale - I wanted to buy one...but I don't know how i would have got him home on the back of the bike!

After the market we carried on to a village called Kupang. This lady was weaving the most beautiful traditional cloth. She invited me into her home to look at other pieces of cloth and to see how they live in the villages. People in West Timor are very poor and live in reed houses in the villages. Even though they are poor they are very friendly and seem to be happy.

Here I am standing outside of one of the village houses...They keep a fire burning all of the time even though it's really hot outside, in order to preserve the corn and other produce they hang up in the roof space, the smoke also keeps the pests from spoiling the preserved food.

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