If you could pick any country in Asia to go to, which one would you pick and why?

Well as much as traveling the ‘Stan’ countries for a year and traveling across the Trans-Siberian Railway are two of my dream trips,  if had to pick one country in Asia it would be East Timor (or Timor-Leste).

Where?

Here (in red):

Why do I want to go there?

Because, as you may remember from my post: Completely Changing My Travel Plans, before I went to South America, I had actually spent the previous 5 1/2 months planning a trip to SE Asia.  A trip that was to start in East Timor.  Why did I want to go here so much?

1) No one (including me) knew where it was.  Most people had never even heard of it, and I only had a passing memory of it being mentioned in portuges class (and since I love learning about new places, I wanted to go somewhere I had never really heard of).  I actually found it when I Googled “countries people have never heard of”.  Yes, that it how I plan trips.

2) They speak portugues.  Ok, Brazilian portuges was the only language I had any remote ability in (and I hadn’t even practiced it in about 7 years at the time), and I knew that this portuges would probably be so different, but I used to be ok in portuges, so I figured that would help.  Granted I may have also ignored the fact that, although portuges is an official language, it is only spoken by about 35% of the population, and that percent is of the older generation.  Everyone my age speaks the other official language, Tetum.  Of which I know nothing.

3) Timor-Leste has a tumultuous history that includes waves of  various indigenous cultures of south-east Asia (like ancient Polynesian and Papuan peoples), it was a trading port for the Chinese and India, taken over by Portugal (who left it as a neglected trading port), invaded by Indonesia, and to this day has a huge United Nations influence (who came in to help out the country, which still has an almost 50% illiteracy rate, and over the 3rd of the people live below the world poverty level.)

4) But it also has a really unique, blended culture because of all of this.   I think, because I have been to, and loved, Croatia so much (who also has a crazy and violent history of being owned by many different peoples for so long), I want to experience another country with a similar history of cultural mixing.

5) I have never been to South-East Asia or Oceania.

6) Tropical beaches.  Duh.

And I still really want to go there for all these same reasons.  I hope that soon I can afford to actually do the South-East Asia trip I had so carefully planned, and not get distracted by $200 tickets to a different continent again!