In the morning we drive the last kilometres to the border crossing at Moto'ain. Leaving Indonesia goes very smoothly: at the immigration office, they say that we have to sign out at the army post before getting our passport stamped. At the army post, we only spend a few minutes and we are ready to go. Then we get the stamps in our passports in no time and proceed to the customs office for a stamp in our Carnet. On the East Timorese side things go less smoothly: first there is a little discussion between border agents on where we should park our bike. We don’t pay too much attention to them and begin to fill out the paperwork. A customs official tells us that we should remove our entire luggage from the bike so that they can scan it. We are really getting annoyed but it gets worse when they tell us to completely empty six (out of nine) cases, so they can look inside. The content of our bags is thoroughly checked and after about an hour of work we reload the bike. Stamping the carnet at the customs office is done in a few minutes and after singing in at the army post we are ready to enter East Timor.

Moto'ain Border

More info on www.wijzijnweg.org