MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY
These dates (3&4 May) a year ago I was still in East Timor...
My friends, Yovita & Batista and I travelled from Dili to Viqueque for my bday escape...
It's 183km south-east from Dili and would normally take around 8-10 hours since we have to revolve more than half of Eastern part of Timor...
We decided to stay over night in Baucau...
The next day we continued the trip to Venilale and Ossu where we saw a quite refreshing waterfall...
The interesting part started when we reached Betano where we had to cross a river of 6 meter wide without a bridge, luckily it wasn't deep...
But we weren't lucky enough with the 2nd river we crossed and got trapped in it...
It took us more than 2 hours to pick the car up from the sandy river with the help of people surroundings!!
We were extremely lucky to meet those people considering it was completely out of nowhere and there wasn't any signal in our hand phone...
It was almost 7pm when we finally can continue the journey back to Dili after trying to dig out all the water in the car...
Just to complete the excitement, we had to reach Dili before midnight because Batista had to come back to his camp before than...
It means that the 7-8 hours journey should be reached by less than 5 hours where the roads were hilly and in snake forms...
The adventure didn't stopped there, as we were approaching Viqueque, a few people put a big tree in the middle of the road to block our way...
They were literally carrying the tree laughing as they saw us approaching!
Yovita said that they did this to every car passing their village to ask for money...
Batista who had been in tension since our car trapped in the river, went furious and pulled out a grenade he carried around than threw it off to the people and BOOM!!!
Though nobody hurt (in fact the people were laughing while they're running!), I was in total shocked!! OMG!!!
The only bomb blast that I heard was the one in the marine's show when I escorted the Brunei's chief of army visit in 2004...
All of our cloths were wet from the river, surroundings by 2 meters wild grass, no lights everywhere (because there were no electricity in most of eastern districts of Timor), bad roads plus the tense you felt from Batista..
For the first time in my life I really thought that I was gonna died back there...
But Batista managed to go around the tree so we could continue our journey...
I was really exhausted but couldn't sleep because I was too scared and tensed, we drove through jungle practically...
We had no food and drinks cause we gave them to the people that helped us in the river...
It was completely beyond anything I've ever experienced...
We finally reached Dili exactly on midnight as Batista showed his off-road skills and drove like mad...
My head was totally dizzy, felt like throwing up and my stomach was puffed up out of my wet pants but I had to get some sleep cause the next morning I had an 8 o'clock meeting with the government of Timor Leste's official...
I know than why Batista was so tensed along the way and didn't wanna stop even for a minute...
In Feb, before the Ramos Horta shooting, there was a UN' car that burned down in Viqueque by the rebels and most south-east part of Timor was still off limit for UN...
There was a negative reaction to UN's presence in some of the south-east part of Timor where we passed through...
Of course Batista as a Portugal police served under UN knew the situation but he didn't tell us cause he must sensed our fear...
There was a mixed feeling of fear, joy, sad and great relieve knowing that we might not survive...
But it was definitely a near-to-death birthday experience that I will never forget for my entire life...
My friends, Yovita & Batista and I travelled from Dili to Viqueque for my bday escape...
It's 183km south-east from Dili and would normally take around 8-10 hours since we have to revolve more than half of Eastern part of Timor...
We decided to stay over night in Baucau...
The next day we continued the trip to Venilale and Ossu where we saw a quite refreshing waterfall...
The interesting part started when we reached Betano where we had to cross a river of 6 meter wide without a bridge, luckily it wasn't deep...
But we weren't lucky enough with the 2nd river we crossed and got trapped in it...
It took us more than 2 hours to pick the car up from the sandy river with the help of people surroundings!!
We were extremely lucky to meet those people considering it was completely out of nowhere and there wasn't any signal in our hand phone...
It was almost 7pm when we finally can continue the journey back to Dili after trying to dig out all the water in the car...
Just to complete the excitement, we had to reach Dili before midnight because Batista had to come back to his camp before than...
It means that the 7-8 hours journey should be reached by less than 5 hours where the roads were hilly and in snake forms...
The adventure didn't stopped there, as we were approaching Viqueque, a few people put a big tree in the middle of the road to block our way...
They were literally carrying the tree laughing as they saw us approaching!
Yovita said that they did this to every car passing their village to ask for money...
Batista who had been in tension since our car trapped in the river, went furious and pulled out a grenade he carried around than threw it off to the people and BOOM!!!
Though nobody hurt (in fact the people were laughing while they're running!), I was in total shocked!! OMG!!!
The only bomb blast that I heard was the one in the marine's show when I escorted the Brunei's chief of army visit in 2004...
All of our cloths were wet from the river, surroundings by 2 meters wild grass, no lights everywhere (because there were no electricity in most of eastern districts of Timor), bad roads plus the tense you felt from Batista..
For the first time in my life I really thought that I was gonna died back there...
But Batista managed to go around the tree so we could continue our journey...
I was really exhausted but couldn't sleep because I was too scared and tensed, we drove through jungle practically...
We had no food and drinks cause we gave them to the people that helped us in the river...
It was completely beyond anything I've ever experienced...
We finally reached Dili exactly on midnight as Batista showed his off-road skills and drove like mad...
My head was totally dizzy, felt like throwing up and my stomach was puffed up out of my wet pants but I had to get some sleep cause the next morning I had an 8 o'clock meeting with the government of Timor Leste's official...
I know than why Batista was so tensed along the way and didn't wanna stop even for a minute...
In Feb, before the Ramos Horta shooting, there was a UN' car that burned down in Viqueque by the rebels and most south-east part of Timor was still off limit for UN...
There was a negative reaction to UN's presence in some of the south-east part of Timor where we passed through...
Of course Batista as a Portugal police served under UN knew the situation but he didn't tell us cause he must sensed our fear...
There was a mixed feeling of fear, joy, sad and great relieve knowing that we might not survive...
But it was definitely a near-to-death birthday experience that I will never forget for my entire life...
posted by rievees at 4:39 PM
1 Comments:
busyetttt...seru dan menegangkan, bener2 peristiwa langka yang bisa terjadi di hari ulangtahun siapapun, hehe...ya untungnya lo gak apa2 ya...
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