Tour de Timor

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Holiday snaps time! Well not actually a holiday, a work trip. I work for an international development organisation and occasionally get the chance to go on field trips like this to visit our projects. Last week I travelled  to Timor Leste, just an hour's flight from Darwin, to visit some of our water and sanitation projects. I'd heard some things about Timor and was aware of it's history but had no idea what to expect. 

I wanted to share just some of the beautiful pictures from the trip. We spent a day and a half with one community following them from sunrise to sunset as the girls collected water for their homes, walked an hour to school then returned and spent the afternoon helping their families on the farm.

I had no idea Timor was this mountainous. The capital Dili sits on the beach and then everything behind it is hills. The roads are mostly dirt and incredible difficult to drive on. It took us 1.5hours to drive 26km! The small building on the hill top is the local school. The children in the village we were at walked about 1 hr 15 min each day to get to school. The school was in quite good condition but the big problem is around resource capacity. While the school had 8 teachers only 2 were paid, the others were all volunteers. When the volunteers couldn't show up the principal would have to teach the extra classes.

This is the village of Mate Restu that we spent the day at. In the first hut lived 2 families about 16 people.

The girls as they walked to collect water. They each carried two 5 litre jerry cans. The girl in blue in the foreground is called Elezete, she's just 9 years old and collects water 3 times a day.

At the water point the children do everything. They wash themselves, brush their teach, comb their hair and then fill up the jerry cans. This is a natural spring and it's flowing out of a cut-in-half piece of bamboo.

The walk down to the water point is crazy steep! I helped carry some jerry cans up and almost fell over a lot of times. For someone half my weight I can't imagine how they do it every day.

This is Erlinda, 12 years old.

I love older people's faces. This was Manuel, one of the oldest men in the village. We spoke to him about how the country had changed over the years.

These two girls were at a different village where our organisation had installed water taps for the community. The little girl in green had the most beautiful smile and walked the whole time arm in arm with this other girl.

Me at work.

The beautiful sunrise as we left Dili on our final day.

All pictures are credited to James Alcock.

One night in Bangkok

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Technically it was one week. But the song doesn't sound quite the same when I hum that in my head.
I was lucky enough a to go to Bangkok for a work conference not last week but the week before. I arrived back last Sunday night and last week seems like a bit of a blur!

I was super excited, partly because I'd never been to Bangkok, partly because I would get to meet all my work colleague from the region and partly because it was warm weather so could break out all my Me Made May gear for hot weather. Hurrah!

The first outfit (15 May) was actually a blue and cream striped t-shirt dress (similar to StitchyBritts here) which I wore on the plane with leggings. I hadn't taken any pictures yet and then managed to leave it in the hotel. Funny story actually, they had one of those fire smoke alarms that had a green light that flashed constantly and kept me awake. So I hung that dress over it to block out the light. Then left it there. Poor cleaners must be wondering what I got up to!

The first day of the conference (16 May) I wore my new black dress with slightly Polish feeling trim, the Colette Pastille (yet to be blogged). I finished this the day before I left *phew*. I'll take some close up photos soon to post about but the top part of this is so nice and neat (!) as I had enough black material to line it. I added some flowery looking trim I had in my stash to make it slightly different to a plain black dress.

The second day (17 May) I had to do a presentation and decided to go with the Megan Nielsen Banksia top (not yet blogged). I originally made this with sleeves but they were so ridiculously tight and uncomfortable I had only worn it once. I ripped off the sleeves and put bias binding around the edges. The collar maybe stands out a bit more now, but at least it's comfortable and will get some wear.

Last up (18 May) I decided to go with the Colette Ginger I made last year. Paired with a black top from Kmart, I quite like how it looks like a dress if you don't look close enough.

I sort of failed to complete MMMay on the 19th May. I started the day wearing the Banksia top but I was transferring hotel (these last two days were personal holiday time) and I tell you what , boy oh boy was it hot outside! So by the time I reached the hotel I was sweating something chronic and changed into something a bit flow-ier - but not me-made.

Have you ever been to Bangkok before? It's an exciting place and he days I wasn't working I spent eating, drinking coconuts and having foot massages. I'm one of those people who travel by eating. I just move from breakfast to lunch to dinner to desert and back to breakfast again.

A delicious restaurant that's founded by an NGO that works in HIV prevention and education. It has really delicious food, cute fairy lights and funds go to the NGO's work.

Oh, they also had decorations made of condoms.

Mmmmm coconuts.

Relaxing by the pool.