One Dollar Beach — Attraction in Manatuto

One of the best known beaches in Timor-Leste. It was a popular spot with UN peacekeepers during the early 2000s. Locals would charge them $1 to access the beach. Entry is now free but the beach is closed with the gate locked and facilities (toilets, pools, etc) out of action. There is no timeline for when the beach will reopen, but it can be accessed by walking around the walls by the beach. The towers are a novel feature, offering good views and shade, but along with the barbed wire topped perimeter wall, make it feel more like a prison camp than a beachside resort. There is good snorkelling here. The beach is part of the large Subaun Important Bird Area which stretches for ~60,000...

This lovely white-sand beach got its name during the early INTERFET/UNTAET days, 1999-2000, where it became a popular place to chill on the beach outside Dili. That all changed after some goose in the Tourism Authority thought such a beautiful place needed concrete, lots of it, to make it a "tourist attraction". Now gated and closed to the public, it looks like a concentration camp, not a beach. The best thing for the place would be to bulldoze the concrete, and provide small business grants to encourage some stallholders and perhaps restaurants to set up on the other side of the road...

Timor Leste is a hard country to visit. It doesn't have the infrastructure needed to promote tourism. As a result, there are very few visitors to the country. The plus side for those that can visit is the beaches near the vicinity of Dili are never crowded. That's especially true for one dollar beach. The sand is white, the sunshine is warm, the crowds are absent, and the water is clear....