There’s a standard price to pay in compensation for hitting a chicken, our friend said, as he navigated our car out of Dili. Another for a pig. It felt like a slightly ominous start to our trip to the “districts”, the local name for everywhere outside the capital city of Timor-Leste.
Annual tourist visits to the youngest country in Asia number in the tens of thousands. We were visiting an economist friend placed through the Oxford Development Institute to help the nascent government.
To read the rest of this article, and to access all Mekong Review content, please subscribe. If you are an existing subscriber, please login to your account to continue reading.
More from Mekong Review
-
Enthusiasts will appreciate Devare's book, but not experts in the field
-
Japan’s occupation of Southeast Asia
-
Moral standards should not depend on public opinion
- Tags: Lila Roberts