East Timor

Jesus was 27 metres tall and elevated 100 metres on a chunk of sea-licked headland, his arms outstretched towards Dili as though offering the devoutly Catholic capital a big, celestial hug. "Come to me", he was saying...
I suspect the reply was "No deal": he wore more graffiti than a Brixton railway siding.

The towering icon was a gift to the Timorese from their previous overlords, the Indonesian government. Between the Indonesian invasion of Timor in 1975 and the UN’s negotiation of peace and independence in 1999, one-third of this country’s population of 750,000 is said to have disappeared.

When I heard East Timor was being spoken of as "the new Thailand", I was incredulous. Timor? Timor-Leste, the world’s newest country, only formally independent from Indonesia since 2002? The Timor made famous by news footage of machete-wielding mobs? Apparently so. Tony Wheeler, Lonely Planet entrepreneur and traffic marshal to the world’s backpackers, loved the place so much, he authored the new Timor guidebook.

From the shadow of Christ’s bronze robe, sheltering from the scorching sun, Dili looked like a poor man’s Papeete, a Rio writ tiny. A haze of smoke from cooking fires hung over tin roofs corroded red by the semi-tropical climate; there was a presidential palace, a large floating hotel, and remnants of 400 years of relatively benign Portuguese dominion - a few colonnaded villas in lurid colours, grandee mansions, a garrison built in 1627. And, of course, Catholic churches.

I went down from the mount and walked the 5km-long waterfront. It was busy in a small sort of way, the wharf attended by container ships, the waters dotted with dugout canoes. Outside the presidential palace, people sat under huge banyan trees selling fish, fruit and Indonesian sweets.

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