July 29-30 - Shopping in Kupang

Our lay days in Kupang were mostly devoted to chores. But chores do include shopping. We hopped a cab with young Nabil for a driver (a more more careful driver than our tour driver...but much less English than Ayub!) and went off to check out "the mall."

It's mighty easy to want to avoid visiting places like westernized-style supermarkets and malls in countries where they are not the norm, but they are part of how the country is changing. Not so westernized that there was a McDonalds, mind you, but there was a KFC!

The highlight of the mall stop was...well, us! The very tall foreigners. I hadn't totally absorbed it before, but Timorese people are pretty small. A flock of Muslim teenagers giggled their way up to us and asked if they could snap a picture with their cell phone. Later, three girls selling cosmetics latched onto Don for same.

The other end of the shopping spectrum is the city market, a rabbit warren of stalls and sheds bringing the country foodstuffs to city dwellers. Here we were besieged by ladies clamoring for our attention and young boys trying to sell us plastic bags for our purchases. Without Ayub, we were reduced to point-and-flounder and hold our a fist full of rupiah for them to pick from, until we were rescued by Mrs. Tali, a nice lady on her day off from cooking at a hotel, who took over our communications.

In exchange, Tom invited her (and Nabil) to join us for lunch. He chose a "Pedang" restaurant where you sit at a table and the waiter delivers a colander full of steamed rice a dozen small precooked dishes from which you pick what you want to eat. The food was interesting and good (if not hot!), and I suspect our two Timorese guests, who stuck mostly to rice, raised some mental eyebrows at how much Americans can (and can afford) to eat!