The Turismo Beach Hotel in Dili is the favoured headquarters of visiting aid workers, doctors, NGOs, peace campaigners, nuns, journalists, camera crews - and yes, even tourists - staying for a few days or months in the East Timor capital.
More of a two-storey motel than a hotel, it is situated on the bay road, otherwise known as Marechal Carmona Avenue, where goats forage on the grass verge and lone fishermen lay out their catch.
It is the most popular lodging place for foreign visitors because of its atmosphere and location. Everything important in the town can be found along the seashore nearby. Bishop Carlos Belo's residence and his open-air church are next door, the colonial-style governor's headquarters with its parade ground is a few hundred yards beyond that, and further along are the private bungalows with scalloped roof tiles typical of Portuguese architecture, where the top Indonesian army and government officials live.
Twenty-four years ago they commandeered these villas with their lush gardens of eucalyptus, oleander and acacia, which were once the preserve of Portuguese colonial officers. From their verandah armchairs the new inhabitants can see two of the landing craft used in the 1975 Indonesian invasion rusting in the silky waters of the Timor Sea.
Other than these buildings there are few reminders of the Portuguese colonial era in the sprawling town. The English scientist, Alfred Russell Wallace, who visited Dili in 1861, described it as "a most miserable town compared with even the poorest of Dutch towns [in nearby Dutch West Timor]". After 300 years of occupation, he noted, there was not a mile of road outside Dili or a single European resident in the interior. "All the government officials oppress and rob the natives as much as they can," he observed. Some things never change.
However, there are paved roads to the interior now, including a spectacular winding road up the mountains above Dili where it is cool enough for a sweater, though they are narrow and here and there huge chunks of the hard surface have fallen down the steep hillsides.
A handful of western residents do live in the interior, like the two charming American nuns, Sister Dorothy and Sister Susan of the Maryknoll order, who teach and minister to the people of the rural town of Aileu.
But most foreigners live in Dili, or to be more precise, in the Turismo Hotel. There life falls into a pattern. Breakfast of boiled egg and toast and marmalade is served from the early hours in the dining room, which is little more than a canteen equipped with a dozen large tables.
Days begin very early in Dili as it gets unbearably hot when the equatorial sun is high, and Sunday mass next door is at 6.30 a.m. Lunch and dinner are various combinations of fish, chicken, vegetables and rice, to which the Chinese owners give a Portuguese and Indonesian flavour, though at times of civil turmoil, like last week, the chicken and fish ran out on some days.
Here in the dim light there is a constant ebb and flow of news, gossip, rumour and intrigue among the residents, with everyone falling quiet to listen to news bulletins on a huge television, especially if East Timor figures in the news. Everyone shares information in the Turismo dining room, and often misinformation, as facts are hard to come by in East Timor.
Activists with an agenda hype up hearsay, always believing the worst when killings are reported - which is understandable in a country where the military and pro-integration militias turn away journalists and hide bodies after a massacre, but not always to be trusted as survivors who flee to the forests are sometimes counted among the dead. Pro-independence East Timorese figures flit in an out of the Turismo, giving interviews and revolutionary handshakes, but many would not dare be seen there.
The lobby and forecourt of the hotel are notorious as a hangout for pro-Indonesian spooks, some with cars for hire so that they can keep a close eye on the doings of the foreigners who rent them.
One can get out of earshot of Indonesian spies by using the tables set among the sandalwood trees of the overgrown hotel garden, but here a more deadly enemy lurks in the form of malaria-bearing mosquitoes, and the old hands will warn you that in the morning it is particularly dangerous as the ones that bite at that time of day carry dengue fever.
The rooms are also infested with mosquitoes, which can sometimes be kept at bay with a combination of deadly weapons, ranging from sprays and repellent to vibrating electric tablets to smoking coils.
Nevertheless, for a hotel at the end of the world, the Turismo has surprisingly good facilities, including, in its "suites" and "VIP" rooms, air conditioning, laundry, refrigerators, and televisions with CNN and ABC (Australian broadcasting).
Telephone calls have to go through the operator, but mobile telephones work in Dili, even in the mountains around the town. This is comforting news for the international voting monitors who may be arriving in Dili in the coming weeks if Portugal and Indonesia can agree on holding a referendum on autonomy which could eventually lead to freedom, a development which would be good news for the East Timorese, and for the proprietors of the Turismo Beach Hotel.