What you will think of the Dili Beach Hotel is likely up to what you expect it to be. Dili is starting to develop, but let's face it, it is not going to be on par with even rural Hawaii. So don't get your hopes up.
Dili Beach Hotel is easy to find, on a major road. As you come up to it, it certainly looks run down and not nearly as nice as the photos on their website. They run a bookshop in the lobby, and there are several desktop computers for guests to use.
Our group rented two-bedroom apartment units with four people in each room. There are fans throughout and A/C units in the bedrooms, which worked very well for us. The tile floors were fairly clean, but the walls contain the dust and smears of the ages. The bathroom is the old Asian style, without a tub or shower - the whole room is the shower. During and after showers, the floor can get very slippery - BE CAREFUL! Not for the faint of heart, but not terrible. One of our rooms had a kitchenette in the rear of the room with a sink and a two-burner propane tank cooktop.
Pluses
The location of the hotel is great, right on the Beach road overlooking the ocean. It is one of the main roads where all of the embassies are located, so it's a pretty safe area. We were able to park our rental cars out front for three nights without incident.
The living room had an Ethernet drop, which were able to turn into a WiFi access point. Internet was slow but pretty reliable.
The free breakfast was good. We ate toast and omelettes in the morning with butter and jam, and Timorese coffee is pretty good if you like the sludgey kind with the grinds in it. The workers were helpful, but customer service is not really practiced in this part of the world, so be prepared for some mild resistance if you ask for something that costs them money.
Minuses
Our group only spoke English, so it was difficult to communicate with the staff here. They were nice enough, but pretty much everything had to be done through Brandon, who is Singaporean and speaks English. The desk workers were not all that reliable, as we had problems leaving messages for each other at the beginning, though that could be mainly the language issue.
We did have some glitches and gross-out moments. When I tried to plug in an international power transformer into the wall, it fried right away, tripping the circuit breaker. I fried another one moments later, using different settings. That being said, this hotel has hybrid Asian-style two round prong/American-style two flat prong outlets in most areas, so we were able to plug in computers and phone chargers directly, as long as they supported 240V. The water is turned off at various times, usually in the middle of the night, and when it comes back, it runs brown for a while.
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