Visiting Timor-Leste during Holy Week
- Spencer Low
- 1 minute ago
- 3 min read
I had visited all the countries of Southeast Asia until October 2025, when Timor-Leste became the 11th member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). I therefore took advantage of my son’s Easter school holiday to visit the former Portuguese territory, so here’s a bit of a photo essay.
We arrived in the capital Dili, a town of 300,000 inhabitants. The Portuguese influence was immediately apparent: the language of Camões is one of two official languages, the other being Tetum, an Austronesian language that has been heavily influenced by Portuguese.
According to some estimates, up to 80% of Tetum is made up of Portuguese loan words or Portuguese-influenced words. This was the result of over 270 years of Portuguese rule from 1702-1975. Interestingly, the Portuguese established Dili only in 1769, as a result of growing Dutch power in other parts of the region. Prior to this Timor was not of particular interest to the Europeans because the island was not rich in spices, although it was rich in valuable sandalwood that found willing buyers in Java, China, and India.
We took a speedboat the next day to get to the island of Ataúro, 25km north of Dili, where we spent four days snorkeling and scuba diving. Thanks to the pristine coral reefs here, Timor-Leste is fast becoming a hot destination for lovers of marine biodiversity.
On Ataúro, we were treated to fantastic sunrises on Ataúro and even an unforgettable moonrise!
We returned to Dili on Good Friday and checked into the historic Hotel Timor. Opened in 1976 with the involvement of Macau tycoon Stanley Ho, the hotel was where the results of the 1999 referendum on independence was announced. Organized by the United Nations, the vote saw 78.5% of the East Timorese choose independence from Indonesia that had occupied Timor-Leste since 1975.
Across from the Hotel Timor is a memorial to the Portuguese military officer and civil servant Manuel de Jesus Pires, who spent half his life in Timor, resisting the Japanese invasion during World War II. Portuguese control resumed after the Japanese surrender at the end of the war, but less than 25 years later came the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal. This prompted the formation of political parties and the acrimonious debates about independence sadly led to a civil war in 1975 that saw the Portuguese disengage from the territory. A left-wing party, FRETILIN, unilaterally declared independence, which prompted an Indonesian invasion less than 10 days later, based on fears that Timor would become communist.
As a result of the long Portuguese presence as well as the role of the Church in recent history, the Timorese are overwhelmingly Catholic. Good Friday therefore sees large crowds of worshippers attending services and processions at all the churches.
The Catholic faith of the Timorese people became their main pillar of strength during the Indonesian occupation. The story of their resistance is presented in the Timorese Resistance Archive & Museum.
Every year on Good Friday, thousands of pilgrims perform the Via Crucis (Stations of the Cross) climbing the more than 500 steps up the hill overlooking Dili to reach the Cristo Rei statue at the summit.
Timor-Leste is a member of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, or Comunidade dos PaÃses de LÃngua Portuguesa (CPLP) in Portuguese. There is a very visible Brazilian population in Timor, and a new Brazilian embassy is being built. Even Angola already has an embassy in Dili.
This is the first Easter since Timor-Leste became the newest member of ASEAN, allowing Portuguese to join English as the only other European language to have official status in a member state. Let us all hope that this represents a form of rebirth, offering a chance for the Timorese to integrate further and faster with the rest of the world.