STUDY OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN COUNTRY: TIMOR LESTE

WHO: Democratic Republic of Timor Leste

WHERE: 640km northwest of Darwin, West Australia, in SEA, eastern half of the island of Timor, largest and easternmost of Lesser Sundar Islands

SIZE: 14874 square km, population 1,115,000

CLIMATE: tropical, hot and humid with rainy and dry seasons

INDEPENDENCE: colonised in 1600s by the Portugese, declared independence in 1975, but was occupied by Indonesia and finally relinquished in 1999, gaining independence in May 20th,2002

LANGUAGE: Portugese or Tetum, Timor Leste is one of the few Portugese colonies where an indigenous language became a lingua france. however there are also many other languages, as the mountains of Timor Leste separated the original settlers and allowed for the preservation of culture.

ORIGINS: related to the principal indigenous groups of New Guinea and Australia and arrived around 40,000 years ago. Malays then arrived from South China and North Indochina

ECONOMY: mostly lower-middle-income economy, used to be known or its sandalwood and has an ongoing project with Australia for natrual gas and petroleum. it also sells Fair Trade organic coffee

RELIGION: nominally Catholic since the Portugese occupation and occasionally animist. the number of Catholics increased with the Indonesian occupation. it is also one of two predominantly Roman Catholic countries in Asia, the other being Phillipines

MUSIC: affected by Indonesian and Portugese influences, uses the gamelan and the fado

CULTURE: poetry,craftsmanship,music,weaving,song and dance. influences on their legends and beliefs have Austronesian and Catholic influences

information taken from wikipedia.
i apologise for the dullness and lack of and wit whatsoever in this post as it was done in class.
comments on this and the previous post would be appreciated.
tank yew.