Life overseas. Schools with first class facilities. Dedicated and polite students. A salary and lifestyle that allows you to put some money in the bank every month. An opportunity to expand your professional and personal horizons. New experiences waiting for you every day.

Does this sound like something that you want? If it is, read on.

So, how do you have a terrific time while making a great living? International teaching is your portal to a life of adventure, professional development and financial security. Jobs for teachers overseas continue to increase as new international schools open around the world. However, as opportunities increase, obtaining a job as an international teacher is more competitive than ever. Teachers need to be prepared for the competition, which is why I wrote this eBook.

The International Teacher: A Guide to Teaching Overseas, has 440 pages of  up-to-date reviews of 156 international schools along with key articles on topics of fundamental importance to teachers searching for positions in international schools. In Section One of The International Teacher you will find articles on:

1. Finding the Fit
2. Writing a Cover Letter
3. Job Fairs
4. Interviews
5. Professional Development

Section Two contains articles on International Education Organizations including:

1. The University of Northern Iowa Placement Service for Educators
2. Search Associates
3. International Schools Services
4. East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools
5. International Baccalaureate Organization
6. Quality Schools International
7. Oasis International Schools

Section Three contains reviews of 155 international schools from five continents. Each school review contains:

1. Coverage of the school mission, facilities, curriculum, extra curricular activities, technology, professional development, employment details, and sociocultural information about the school’s location.
2. Updated links to the school website, employment information, email addresses, and more.

Why you should buy this book!

This eBook is in downloadable PDF format with hyperlinks that allow you to instantly access the most recent information on 155 schools. The articles in Section One cover the most important aspects of finding an international job and allows you to be competitive in a highly competitive market. My years in international education have given me an insider’s knowledge of the international teaching market. As a retired teacher commented on a pre-publication of this book:

I wish that you had written this during my teaching years. The ease with which I was able to access information on so many schools, including ones that I have never heard of, would have made my job searches much more enjoyable and wide-ranging than they were.

A long-time international educator wrote to me recently about this book. He said:

An excellent resource for teachers looking for schools. Well written with witty comments and comprehensive. Cool images, which make most eBooks I have seen look positively dreary. A good buy!

For some examples of what you will find in The International Teacher go to my blog, The International Teacher. You will find reviews of schools as well as articles on teaching overseas. This eBook grew out of The International Teacher blog and covers more schools in greater detail with the most current information available. Plus, as a benefit for all purchasers of this book, you will receive next year’s update (due out in October 2010) for free.

About the Author

I have a Ph.D. in anthropology, and I’ve been teaching now for 33 years. My positions have ranged from preschool to university. I’ve been overseas now for 20 years. In that time, I’ve taught just about every subject that schools offer. My first position overseas was teaching Second Grade to a group of expat students in a small mining community in Indonesia. Since then I’ve taught computers, math, anthropology, physical education, art, library, social studies, science, health, and more. I’ve been a computer coordinator at four schools, an elementary/middle school principal at two schools, and I’ve served on countless accreditation and curriculum committees as well. As a teacher and administrator, I’ve been on both sides of the job search – interviewer as well as interviewee.

Buy This Book Today! (And You Might Be Shopping in Dubai Next Year)

Do you really want to keep teaching in your home country?

Payment is via PayPal.The price is only $10.00 and remember that you get all future updates for free by purchasing the first edition now.

I’m known for the lack of traveling that I do. Usually, I stick to driving one of my daughters to school, going to one of the local stores for shopping, visiting the bank once a week and snorkeling in front of the house. It’s a pretty non-adventurous life. I certainly couldn’t have done this ten years ago – I would have gone stir crazy, but ten years can have a calming effect on a person. My years in Pakistan during the early days of the war in Afghanistan were fairly adventurous, and my nine years of roaming the jungles of New Guinea were exciting and gave me a wealth of tales to tell. I’ve more or less settled into a family-oriented life now – the kids, my wife, and reading and writing keep me satisfied and amused.

However, I still am struck by the occasional need to get out of the house, the neighborhood, and the city and wander around Bali to see what is going on in the other parts of the island. This past weekend, I headed down South to Kuta with two friends to spend a few days just looking around, as I haven’t spent any time there in years.

I was astounded by the amount of money that is evident in all the luxury houses, apartments, commercial buildings, condos and villas. Huge billboards advertising one housing development after the next with prices listed at $150,000 and up and up blighted the view along Sunset Road. We pulled in to Carrefour so that I could check on what items they had for sale there, and again I was amazed at all the imported specialty food items.

One of the characteristics of aging is a tendency to anchor reality somewhere in a past often veiled by the mists of time. I noticed that my comments during the two days we were down south were punctuated with “I remember when this was…” By the end of the second day, I was just getting to accepting the reality of the south as it is now – one continually developing sprawl of malls, housing complexes and businesses catering to the ever increasing expatriate and tourist population.

For me, the trip was useful because it gave me a more realistic idea of what is happening in the south. I feel much more confident now answering the regular email questions that appear in my inbox about where I would live if I had the chance to move again. No question for me that I continue to be a partisan of Buleleng.

When one thinks of sex tourism, Bali does not immediately come to mind like the Philippines, Cambodia or Thailand. But, where there are tourists and people with money, there are going to be people working at the oldest profession. You won’t find the nightlife of bars, go-go dancers and open sex for sale that you will find in these other locales, but if you look around just a little you’ll find plenty of sex for sale for both men and women.

Now, this can be quite controversial, and I know a number of long-term expats who claim that Balinese women do not work in the prostitution business, but I also know plenty of Balinese guys who claim otherwise. Regardless of whether the women (we’ll stick to women here as the majority of the sex tourist trade is male) are from Bali, Java or elsewhere, you can find brothels in Sanur and Denpasar and ladies openly solicit at night on the streets of Kuta. Additionally, you’re liable to find that the young lady sitting next to you in a nightclub or bar is available for some nighttime fun. That being said, Bali is certainly not the place to go if you want to easily engage in sex for pay. You’re far better off visiting Thailand, Cambodia, or the Philippines where the bar scene is more established and accepted.

But, there are expats that come here – both men and women – looking for romance and possibly a local spouse. This has become increasingly true over the years. While some of the cross-cultural marriages are of partners basically the same age, it is more common these days to see an older gentlemen squiring around his young Balinese or Indonesian wife on his arm, and you’ll find some middle-aged ladies with a much younger spouse as well.

Let’s take a look at how this works on the ground and discuss those relationships where the goal is marriage and not just a quickie.

It’s easy enough to meet Indonesians who are potential partners. If you are here on a work assignment, there are always friends, colleagues and family of colleagues. This is the easiest way to meet people. Indonesians love to socialize, and if you are even reasonably friendly, you’ll be invited to weddings, birthdays, and all sorts of private and public events. Having an expat friend is for many Indonesians something of a status symbol. Yes, you too can become a star here even if back home you were nothing more special than a truck driver or a teacher. Like it or not, our white skin has some social value here.

So you can meet people at social gatherings and the workplace, but additionally you can meet people on the street, in restaurants, clubs, bars or shops. In other words, you can meet a potential romantic partner anyplace that you might meet one back home. But (there’s always a but), there are a number of issues that arise in cross-cultural relationships that you will have to deal with at the start of your relationship, and some that you will continue to have to deal with over the length of your relationship.

Language

Indonesia is not a predominately English speaking country. In fact, unless you deal with highly educated people or tourist industry workers, it is quite likely that you will not meet many people with more than a basic, at the most, command of English. So what are you going to do? First, learn Indonesian. The language is relatively easy to learn in comparison with Thai, for instance. Indonesian has a number of words based on one of the Romance Languages due to its colonial history – the English have been here, as have the Spanish and the Portuguese. So if you have a background in one of those languages, you have a head start on learning Indonesian.

Relationships are difficult enough to navigate without the language barrier. So, you are best off if you start learning Indonesian early. I know many expats with a minimal grasp of Indonesian, and they say that it isn’t a problem for them, but based on my 18 years of marriage to an Indonesian, I strongly advise you learn the language.

Age

As I noted, there is often a relatively large age gap between the Western and Indonesian partners. Is this a problem? It could be depending on how mature your partner is for his/her age.

I’ll use an expat (Tom) that I knew years ago as an example of one result of a large age difference in partners. He married a beautiful young woman who was 35 years younger than him. He wanted to stay home and watch tv, spend an occasional evening out with his buddies drinking, and just generally enjoy his retirement. Dewi wanted to socialize with people her age, go clubbing, and eat out a lot (she wasn’t much of a cook). Finally just to end the constant bickering over what to do each night, Tom told his wife that she could spend a few nights a week out with her friends and he would do the same. Sounds equitable? Well, she eventually met a younger expat with interests more like her own, and after a number of bitter scenes, the two divorced, and Tom moved back to the States.

Is this necessarily going to happen? No, certainly not. I have a few expat friends who have managed to navigate the age gap quite well, but it takes work and two partners who are willing to do a lot of compromising. Partners who are widely separated in age often meet with some social disapproval (usually quite muted) and this is particularly true if the partner is particularly young looking. Unfortunately, my teenage daughters have reached the age where they are very self-conscious about being out along with me in public, because of some of the comments and stares that they pick up on from both Indonesians and expats.

Educational background/Life experiences

Expats are hardly a homogeneous group; you’ll find the same sort of demographic spreads that you would find in any community back home. There are the rich, the pensioners struggling to get by on a small pension, the highly educated, and the technical school graduates who have worked the oil fields or gold mines for the past thirty years. If you and your spouse have a broad gap in education, you could run into some problems in dinnertime conversation. Remember, just like in any other marriage, you shouldn’t expect your partner in a cross-cultural marriage to be everything to you. Cultivate some friends who have similar interests and experiences to you. An expat friend of mine once said, “I didn’t marry Ina to talk about literary theory.”

Family

Yours, hers, and ours. Yes, family can almost certainly be an issue when you marry an Indonesian. Family is the most important thing in an Indonesian’s life, whether they’re Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Buddhist. Family is expected to stick together and support each other. If you have a child from a previous marriage and don’t have regular communications, your spouse will find this strange and disturbing. If you marry a much younger partner, your children from a previous marriage may resent this and relations between you and them may suffer. Before you commit to a relationship in Bali, you need to think about how it is going to affect your family back home and how important that is to you.

If your spouse has aging, ill or poor parents, he/she may want to assist them financially. I know a number of expats who do this willingly. Often an Indonesian spouse will bring this up early in your relationship. Deal with it openly and calmly. If you are willing to help, give you spouse a set allowance for the parents-in-law and stick to it. Your partner may have younger siblings who need financial assistance for school. Again, make a decision after talking it through with your partner and stick to your agreement. It will make everyone happier.

On the other hand, I know a number of expats who absolutely refuse to give anything to their spouse’s family. In some cases, this eventually led to divorce, but more often your spouse will find a way to quietly divert some of the household money to her/his family. In the cases that I know like this, the Western partner is never the wiser and life continues on in blissful peace. If you think that you are getting what you should be for the household money that you give your spouse, don’t worry about where the money is going.

Finally, there is the issue of how you are going to raise your children, if you have any. Children are considered to be a great joy by Balinese and Indonesians. The whole family will take part in raising your child whether you like it or not. One of the major problems with this for the expat is the issue of sweets. Indonesians will stuff some candy in a child’s mouth as soon as they cry. A lot of Indonesian children have a mouthful of cavities by the time they are six. You’ll need to be clear on how you want to deal with this issue, and then once you are, you can expect your spouse’s family to go ahead and do what they want anyway.

Another child-related issue that can cause some tension between spouses is discipline. Expats tend to have stricter standards of childhood behavior than Indonesians. Indonesians tend to be quite flexible with children, and if they complain or whine enough they will usually get their way. Work of discipline issues early on with your spouse. My wife likes that I’m the disciplinarian in the house because it suits her cultural makeup not to be strict with the children.

If you are married to a Muslim, your son will be expected to be circumcised eventually. This will be a major hurdle for you if you are against male circumcision. A Muslim male must be circumcised, so you are going to need to get used to the idea. Unlike in the West, however, boys are not circumcised in Indonesia until they are aware of the significance of the action so you can rest easy for six or seven years. In many Indonesian Muslim communities, girls may be expected to be circumcised. Generally this is just a nick on the clitoris, but you should check with your spouse on this. This is a highly emotional issue for many expats and whatever your decision, you should probably not discuss it in the expat community unless you want to engage in a lot of debate.

You will need to school your child eventually. See the section on education for a discussion of this issue.

Religion

Balinese and most Indonesians are very religious. If you marry a Hindu, you will not be expected to convert to Hinduism in most cases. That being the case, I know many expats who have become Hindus – some because they truly find the religion to be personally fulfilling, others because they think that it is expected and will make their life in Bali easier, and some because they find it exotic. Whatever, the reason, it is possible to convert to Hinduism, and Balinese are always welcoming to the new convert. There are a number of ceremonies that you will have to go through, and it can be costly depending on how you do it, but the expats that I know that have become Hindus have all expressed great satisfaction with their choice.

If you marry a Muslim woman, you will be expected to convert as a Muslim woman is not allowed to marry a non-Muslim man (however, if you are a woman and your husband is Muslim, you will not necessarily have to convert as a Muslim male may marry a non-Muslim female). I did marry a Muslim woman without converting and it caused a rift in family relationships that weren’t repaired until we had our first child, and I let it be known that I had no objection to my daughter being raised as a Muslim. I did convert many years later, but that was due to personal circumstances.

Converting to Islam is quite easy and inexpensive. Muslims are very welcoming of new members to the religious community. Basically all you need to do to convert is to recite the Kalima – There is no god but Allah and Muhammad (P.B.U.H) is prophet. Once this is done in a nice little ceremony, you will be officially recognized as a Muslim. Once you are a Muslim, you are expected to follow the following: 1) Pray five times a day; 2) Offer zakat – a tax for the poor; 3) Make the Haj if possible; 4) Fast during the month of Ramadan. Muslims are also expected not to drink alcohol, although many Muslim men often conveniently forget this requirement.

If your spouse is a Christian or a Buddhist, you will not necessarily be expected to convert, although most Christians that I’ve meet in Indonesia expect their spouse to be Christian as well.

If you do convert to any of these religions, you will be expected to attend ceremonies occasionally. You will need to work out a mutually acceptable modus vivendi for yourself and your spouse as there are many, many ceremonies to attend in Indonesia. My wife and I have worked it out so that I only need to attend the major ceremonies. Over the years, the community and family members have gotten used to my non-attendance at many of the ceremonies.

Money

Ah money. It’s a problem everywhere whether you are in a cross-cultural relationship or one with a member of your home country. Traditionally, Balinese and Indonesians are not great savers; they spend what they make. If you are a fiscal conservative, this approach to financial planning may be difficult to deal with. I have to admit that money has been the main source of contention between my wife and I over our 18 years of marriage. The best solution that we’ve found is that she has her household allowance, and I deal with the rest of the money.

Expats are often assumed to have a lot of money by Balinese – after all we traveled to Bali and we are building or buying a house (call it a villa and everyone will assume that you have even more money than if you say you want to build a house). Because most expats are coming from Western countries with economies more robust than Indonesia’s, you will find it difficult to explain that you have limited funds (if that is, in fact, the case).

There is a dual-pricing system where you will be charged more than a local for what you want. Let your Indonesian partner do the shopping unless you are shopping in a fixed-price shop like you will find in the shopping malls. But, even in these shops, your Indonesian partner may be able to negotiate some discount or get a “free” gift if you are buying something large and expensive like a car or electronics.

A lot of the money issues between partners are related to trust. In the end, unless you want to be continually counting your funds and trying to figure out what you partner is doing with the money, you need to trust him/her. It’s a hard thing to do for many of us, but you’ll be better off if you learn to develop trust quickly.

Sex

OK, let’s get down to that facet of human life that really fascinates and preoccupies us all. Regardless of what you may have fantasized, the chances that you are going to find a sex god or goddess are really no better in Bali than anywhere else in the world. Bali has long had the reputation of the land of the bare breasts (even though the only bare breasts that you are likely to find are those of a grandmother in a remote village or a tourist on the beach in Kuta) and even now that tropical fantasy still exists.

Pre-marital sex certainly exists in Bali – many of my young Balinese friends get married after the girl is pregnant – but, you may find it somewhat of a problem if you are a Western man looking for a Balinese/Indonesian partner. Balinese guys will readily be available for sex anytime anywhere just like guys everywhere else in the world. Balinese/Indonesian women, however, may be a little more reticent about engaging in pre-marital sex. This is the old reputation/respectability dichotomy. Women have to worry about how they will be seen by family and neighbors, and the truth of the matter is unless you make a commitment, you may not get past first base in the early stages of courtship.

Balinese/Indonesians have a very earthy sense of humor about sex, and you’ll find a lot of joking about sex in mixed groupings even within the Muslim community. I attended a celebration for the birth of the Prophet once in Singaraja. A well-known Muslim speaker was on the bill for the evening. I was surprised that a lot of his jokes were about sex (between husband and wife, of course). Families often live in tight quarters so children learn about sex early and in many ways are much more mature about it than Western children. However, parents are parents around the world, and Indonesians keep on eye on their daughters, so be warned. You may end up with a very pissed-off father (along with his male relatives) at your house one day if you try to take things too far too fast.

Of course, a lot of this has to do with where your partner is from. There has been a lot written on the internet about Javanese girls who come to Bali either to find a mate or do a little business. But, while some are party girls, others are working locally in hotels or other businesses that cater to tourists. The reality unfortunately is that if you end up with a Javanese partner, many Balinese will assume that she is a hooker. You need to be aware of this and be ready for some of the snide comments that may be made to, or about, your partner. In the early years of our relationship, when my wife and I went down to the Kuta area to shop or just get out of Singaraja for a day or two, we often ran into some of these types of people.

Even if you have a Balinese partner, she may be subject to some snide remarks particularly from the groups of young men that hang around warungs. This is one of those facts of life that arise in cross-cultural relationships. Once you have children, this will change. If you have a good relationship with people in your village and your partner’s family, you should experience no real problems.

Even after marriage, you may find that you partner (and I’m only talking about female partners here as that is as far as my experience goes), remains quite shy about wandering around naked in front of you. This is not uncommon so go slowly. Don’t try to push your values or lifestyle on your partner. Sex is a culturally constructed concept and you need to negotiate with your partner about what role sex is going to play in your relationship.

Gay and Lesbian Relationships

I’m a life long heterosexual (or a breeder as a gay friend likes to call me) so my information on the gay life in Bali is second-hand. I do, however, have a number of gay expat friends who live in Indonesia so I have some idea of the scene for gay guys. I have to say that I don’t know any gay women – either expat or Indonesian. I know there is a Lesbian scene, I just don’t know where or anything about it.

As for men, finding a partner is relatively easy for casual sex; finding a partner for a more long-term relationship is a bit more difficult. Generally the same issues arise in gay relationships as in heterosexual ones with the exception that gay relationships, while generally tacitly accepted by most Balinese and Indonesians, are not usually openly acknowledged. There is a large gay scene down in the Kuta area with a number of bars specifically catering to gay expats and tourists. As a friend said recently, you can tell who is gay by just exchanging glances.

The Short and Skinny

If you come to Bali looking for romance, you’ll most likely find it. It may not necessarily be true love in the commonly accepted Western sense of true love, but it can be and it can be great. I’ve been married for 18 years to the same lovely Indonesian woman, and while we’ve had our trials due to cross-cultural misunderstandings, I’m here for the long run. So hang loose, take your time, follow cultural rules and standards, and enjoy yourself.

Bali is becoming one of Asia’s favorite places for foreigners who are looking to retire somewhere where life is somewhat simpler (and cheaper) than in the West. Potential expats in Bali have a variety of options; the retirement visa is just one of them, and it is becoming the vehicle of choice for those of us who want to retire and do not plan on working.

The Retirement Visa is becoming quite popular despite having some requirements that are stricter than neighboring countries.

These are the current requirements for a Retirement Visa:

•    Being 55 years of age or older.
•    Be in good health
•    Have no intention of working in Indonesia
•    Having an income of at least USD 1,500 per month. This needs to be documented.
•    Having health and life insurance.
•    Renting ($500 a month or more) in an approved tourist area.
•    Being sponsored by an authorized company.
•    Having documented proof that you employ at least one Indonesian citizen.
•    Having personal liability insurance.

If you can meet the requirements listed above, you will need the following documentation in order to file for the Retirement Visa.
•    A copy of your passport and travel documents
•    Health Insurance
•    Life Insurance
•    Proof of holding a pension or bank deposit
•    Curriculum Vitae
•    A Personal Guarantee letter that states where you will live with proof of a rental agreement and lease. The housing that you select must be in an authorized tourist area.
•    Employment letter stating that you are employing at least one Indonesian citizen and in what capacity.
•    Photographs – 10 4×6, 4 3×4, 4 2×3 all with a red background.

After providing this documentation, you will be approved (hopefully) for your visa and will receive a KITAS (Limited Stay Permit Card) that will be good for one year. This can be renewed yearly for up to five years after which time you can apply for a KITAP (Permanent Stay Permit). You will need to leave the country if you are already inside Indonesia and apply at one of the Indonesian Embassies located worldwide. The various embassies have differing reputations on the ease, or lack thereof, of getting your application approved. Most expats go through Singapore and often use an agent there to take their documentation to the Embassy. This can usually be completed in one day – they pick up your documentation at your hotel in the morning and return it in the late afternoon. This can be a stressful experience as I can attest. Try to relax and enjoy your day in Singapore if you are going through this embassy.

Once you obtain your paperwork from your agent, you fly back to Bali and present it to the immigration officers at the airport. They will examine it and stamp your passport. You then need to turn in everything that you have to your agent in Bali, or take it to the Immigration Department if you are doing all of this by yourself.

If you wish to leave Indonesia for a trip while you are on a KITAS, you will need to apply for an exit and re-entry permit. You will need to pay a small fee for this (around Rp. 200,000 if you use an agent).

If you want to leave the country permanently, you will need an EPO (Exit Permit Only). Only do this if you want to give up your KITAS, as using an EPO will require you to being the whole process all over again if you want another KITAS.

After five renewals, you may apply for an unlimited stay permit (KITAP).

If you hold a KITAS, you can ship a container of household goods from your home country to Bali, although the costs of getting your goods through customs can be high depending on your luck and skill. I’ve been in the customs area and watched foreigners squirm as the custom’s officer tried to get as much money as possible from them. Make sure you have a friend with good connections with you when you collect your goods.

So how much does life in paradise cost? Well, that all depends (like a lot of things in Indonesia) on how you go about obtaining your visa. There have been a proliferation of agents in recent years who can smooth the way for you, and their costs vary although generally they are roughly similar. Plan on paying somewhere around $700 a year for your visa. The initial one will be a bit more costly because of the trip to Singapore and the use of an agent there to file your paperwork for you. However, once you get your first visa, you will not have to leave the country again. Sound simple? I’m in the process of obtaining mine right now and so far, so good. So if you want to retire in Asia, Bali may be the place for you.

By Bruce E. Pohlmann

For some reason, mostly, I guess, due to the distortions of perception common to those who live in small villages, I had the impression that Sumbawa Besar would be a wonderland of shops, restaurants, hotels and perhaps even a bookstore.  The reality is that it’s the sleepy little capital city of a large, sleepy island. After an uneventful night at the Hotel Tambora with only one offer of a woman (“I’m married.” “It doesn’t matter.” “It does if you know my wife.”), and a breakfast of toast and bitter coffee, I’m ready to head back to my little village of Sekongkang. I’m looking forward to the ride as the sky is a cobalt-blue and a soft breeze promises a pleasant journey on my trusty Honda.

Just outside of town I pass the Kencana Beach Bungalows which are owned by the same family that owns the Tambora in Sumbawa Besar. I take a quick peak, find the bungalows inviting and regret that I didn’t stay here rather than in town. But, the thought of getting back to my family encourages me to push on.

Before I arrive at the harbor of Poto Tano, Bungin Island pops into view; it’s one of the curiosities of Indonesia. Bungin is known as the most densely populated place in the country. From the coast line, I stop and take a few photos of the island since I don’t want to take the trouble to hire a boat to reach the island. Bungin Island is actually a coral reef on which stilt houses are packed together cheek to jowl. The residents make a living by fishing. I was told by an Indonesian colleague that the people of the island intermarry and rarely leave. A people with the mental fortitude that enables them to accept such insularity and lack of privacy seem far beyond my meager ability to understand.

I continue on and soon arrive at the turn off to the harbor at Poto Tano. Travel in an archipelago for people without the means to take an airplane requires moving from island to island via ferry. While far from luxury vessels, ferries in Indonesia serve their purpose in an unassuming, but fairly efficient manner. Ferries leave Poto Tano regularly for Lombok. The crossing takes about 90 minutes, and is one of the colorful aspects of traveling in the more remote parts of Indonesia. Families often bring box lunches and drinks with them to consume on the journey, but for those who haven’t had the time or inclination to pack some snacks, there are plenty of hawkers selling fruits, boiled rice packages, drinks, chocolate bars, and cigarettes. Cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles compete for space in the bottom tier of the ferries.

As I turn onto the highway that winds down the southwest coast, I think about stopping in Setaluk, a village just down the road where an Englishman who married a local lady lives, but I’ve forgotten his address so I slowly cruise past the market thinking that he might be there shopping with his wife and new child.  While I don’t see him, I become an object of interest for the locals who obviously don’t get many foreigners in their village. A group of teenagers gathered on the edge of the market wave and shout, “Hello bule.” The attention that locals pay to foreigners in this part of Sumbawa doesn’t quite have the edge that foreigner/local interactions have in Bali. As tourism hasn’t developed here yet, locals lack an economic interest in their interactions with foreigners, and the resulting relations are generally ones of mutual curiosity. As I drive on, I think about my first contact with a Balinese outside of the tourist areas back in 1989. I was on a bus traveling from Denpasar to Singaraja via Pupuan. It was my first trip outside Irian Jaya in the five months that I had been living in Indonesia. Dressed in my teacher uniform of a Polo shirt and pressed slacks and carrying a bulging, battered red cloth suitcase, I stuck out on the bus filled with Balinese returning home from the capital. The ancient bus groaned to a halt just outside of Pupuan and a tiny old grandmother seated next to me asked if I would like to share some of her meal of fried rice and chicken. We sat and chatted for an hour over our lunch while the driver repaired the bus. When we finally reached Pupuan, the grandmother got down and invited me to visit her house if I ever happened to be in the area again. After a week of being hustled in Kuta, this small interaction elevated my frame of mind and opened me up once again to my imagined reality of Bali.

By the time my daydreaming is finished, I realize that I have just passed the Pertamina station just north of Taliwang. I make a u-turn and head back. There’s a small line at the pump, so I take my place. A government employee in a brown uniform is just in front of me on his Honda Kharisma. He turns, adjusts his brown government-issued cap on a slightly graying thick crop of hair. “Do you speak Indonesian?” he asks somewhat shyly.

“Oh, a little bit,” I reply. My inquisitor introduces himself as Hassan and gives me a firm handshake holding it somewhat longer than a Westerner would. It took me several years before I grew past being uncomfortable with the long Indonesian handshakes. One of the hardest Indonesian cultural traits to become accustomed to is the minimalist idea of personal space. Americans generally have a large invisible space that they like to surround themselves with; Indonesians have almost none and think nothing of standing as close as possible to foreigners as they are unaware of this very significant cultural difference.

“How do you like the Kharisma?” Hassan says. I’m completely thrown by this very unusual opening to a conversation. I had already prepared my list of responses to the usual sequence of questions, but none of them included comments about my motorbike. Now I need to actually pay attention to the conversation. We chat for a few minutes about our bikes and then slide into the usual questions of where I’m from, what I do, married or not, children, etc. Hassan invites me to visit his house in Taliwang, but I tell him I’m late for a meeting with my contractor and take a rain check. I fill my bike with subsidized gasoline for the ridiculous price of 1 US dollar and head off for Jelenga where I want to stop for a beer and chat with Memed at the bungalows about how the tourist season has gone so far this year.

The road from Taliwang to Jereweh is smoothly paved, and I put the bike up to its comfortable limit of 100 for a short burst. It handles well and within 15 minutes I’m in Jereweh. Jereweh is a small, pretty town with well-ordered houses, several mosques, a number of shops and a high school. The cleanliness of the main road impresses me each time I pass through. Indonesians, unfortunately, have a propensity for throwing their trash anywhere outside of their immediate living environment even if it means throwing it in the vacant lot next door. For whatever reason, the citizens of Jereweh seem to have found a less public place to deposit their trash and that sense of civic awareness endears them to me. Just as I’m about to turn off on to the road to the beach, I see Memed driving down the road with a tourist. I decide that the 8 kilometer bounce down the potholed road is not worth sitting alone with a beer – so I drive on.

The road outside Jereweh climbs through a series of hills until you reach the high point which overlooks the village of Benete. This stretch of the road offers some of the finest of Sumbawan landscapes: a series of deep green hills and valleys reach far out into the distant horizon. Eagles circle in the clear blue sky looking for a meal. I stop at one of the clear points on the road where I can take a few photographs. Shooting the vistas and smoking a cigarette, I imagine a time when a relative of the recently discovered Flores Man (actually a lady) might have wandered these hills 18,000 years ago looking for the tiny elephants that roamed the area, or foraging for fruits and roots. The jungle at the edge of the horizon is still free from the development occurring just to the south and the north. This unspoiled space is an interlude of the primitive in the developing composition of modernity being written on southwest Sumbawa.

I descend into Benete which is an overgrown village alongside the portside facilities of PT. Newmont, the American mining company digging gold and copper out of the surrounding hills. Many of the Indonesian employees of Newmont live here within easy access of their place of employment. A few shops, schools, and mosques line the main road. A string of school children walking home from school, shout and wave. I give a quick wave and smile. Just south of Benete, I climb another hill and descend into the village of Maluk, the main center of activity in southwest Sumbawa.

Maluk has the look, feel and smell of a village hastily morphed into a town. Take the cars and motorcycles out of the picture and Maluk could pass for Dodge City in the U.S. West circa 1880. I slow down behind several horse-drawn carts carrying jilbab-covered ladies clutching bunches of greens and a few live roosters. Maluk boasts a dentist, several doctors, a public health clinic, telephones, electricity, and a public water system. The main road is lined with a variety of small shops selling the usual Indonesian foods, household supplies and building materials. Maluk also hosts the Kiwi Bar, a bar and restaurant with a somewhat naughty reputation, as well as Hotel Trophy which is owned by an Australian and his Indonesian wife. Residents of the local villages, including my own village of Sekongkang Bawah, do the majority of their shopping in Maluk. Goods here tend to be somewhat higher than in the more populated areas of Indonesia because of the transportation factor. I guide my Honda up to the Dunia Baru store which sells a variety of things including fishing gear, sporting goods, and stationary. I grab a cold bottle of Coca-Cola from the glass-faced refrigerator, ask the shop girl to open it, and take a long drink to wash the dust out of my mouth. Pak Haji, the owner, pulls up in front in his Kijang, and shakes my hand.

“Where’s your wife?” he asks looking around his shop. He’s dressed in his usual rumpled t-shirt and baggy knee-length shorts.

I wonder where this conversation will go as local businessmen generally try to sell me things when I’m out on my own without my wife to put a damper on their energetic capitalist impulse. “She’s at home. I just came back from Sumbawa Besar. I needed to buy some circuit breakers.” Ah, put everything out there all at once. This is my ploy to end the conversation early so that I can go home and see the family and have lunch.

“What kind of circuit breakers?” he quizzes me while looking over my shoulder at my bulging backpack. Obviously the conversation is going to last longer than I had hoped.

I decline to pull the breakers out of my backpack still hoping to get out the door quickly. “25 amps.”

He shakes his balding head with the look of regret. “I could have sold you some. You wouldn’t have had to go so far.”

“Oh you have some?” I reply with genuine interest. This could save me some time in the future.

“No, but I could have ordered some from Lombok. They have better quality ones.” He’s waiting for me to order some at what I’m sure will be a significantly higher cost than what I paid in Sumbawa Besar.

“Oh well, maybe next time. I have to run now. I have a meeting at school soon.” I give his large hand a tight grip, break it off quickly and head off for home.

The village of Sekongkang is actually two small villages separated by a narrow, concrete bridge: Sekongkang Atas (Upper Sekongkang) and Sekongkang Bawah (Lower Sekongkang). Both are situated about 15 minutes from Maluk over a high hill laced with a narrow, curving road that I enjoy riding on with my motorbike, but dread driving on in my car. The two Sekongkangs have perhaps several thousand residents between them along with a new public health clinic, a doctor, a few shops, a few mosques, a few elementary schools and a junior high, and a new government office, the Kantor Camat. The Sekongkangs are the site of a frenzy of construction. It seems that everyone connected with the Newmont mine is building a new home or renovating their old one. The local government has hopes of developing a tourist industry based on the wild beauty of the white sand beaches and Sumbawanese culture. And while some tourists come for the surfing, a clear plan to develop the other enticements of the area has yet to be developed.

Most of the folks here are farmers or casual laborers. The mine also provides employment for some of the local citizens. A few work at one of the two local hotels: Yoyo’s or Tropical. Yoyo’s, named after the famous surfing spot in this area, and Tropical just down the road, mostly provide service for the expatriate population from Newmont. Occasionally they attract a few of the more well healed surfers, but generally their prices keep the hard core surfers looking for cheaper accommodations up north in Maluk or Jelenga.

This corner of Sumbawa is home to migrants from a variety of islands drawn here in the search for employment with the mine. My neighbors come from Flores, Sumba, Timor, Lombok, and Java; yet everyone gets along famously. Like small communities around the world, Sekongkang Bawah is a place where everyone’s business is public knowledge.

I pull up to the gate of our house and beep my horn. My neighbor, originally from Jereweh, comes over while I’m waiting for someone to come unlock the gate. “Where have you been?” he shouts.

Paul Theroux in The Happy Isles of Oceania says that, “Travel, which is nearly always seen as an attempt to escape from the ego, is in my opinion the opposite. Nothing induces concentration or inspires memory like an alien landscape or a foreign culture. It is simply not possible (as romantics think) to lose yourself in an exotic place. Much more likely is an experience of intense nostalgia, a harking back to an earlier stage in your life, or seeing clearly a serious mistake. But this does not happen to the exclusion of the exotic present. What makes the whole experience vivid, and sometimes thrilling, is the juxtaposition of the present and the past – London seen from the heights of Harris Saddle.”

Sumbawanese from this part of the island have a rough and tough manner somewhat like a displaced New York taxi driver. They are harmless, but nosier and more aggressive than the Balinese or Javanese. “Just back from Sumbawa Besar for some electrical parts,” I reply in a muted, but strident tone. I pull out the three circuit breakers and he smiles and nods.

“It’s hard buying things here isn’t it? Can’t you get some from Newmont?”

I replay once again my set piece on not being an employee of the mining company, but rather the school that contracts with it for educating the expatriate children. Mining companies often have a somewhat problematic relationship with the local communities; Newmont has had its share of problems as well, but because of their proactive community development program, they have a good reputation with the local citizens. I start to drift off into a mental accounting of Newmont’s many contributions to the community, but Lupe’s nodding brings me back to the present interaction.

Even while nodding, the vacant look he gives me signifies that he doesn’t really believe my explanation. While Indonesians are differentiated here based on the island of their birth, bules (white people) are lumped together. It’s distinctly different from Bali, the tourist haven, where Balinese are quite skilled in assigning foreigners concrete identities based on their nationality. In this remote area of Indonesia, bules have two identities – surfer or Newmont employee. Since I work “inside” as the locals call the mining community, I obviously fit into the second category. Identity politics in an archipelago of travelers and migrants. My eldest daughter, Mercedes, bounces out of the house and unlocks the gate. One more trip through Paradise.

Sumbawa: A Different Kind of Paradise

It is a dilemma that every traveler faces – especially every traveler who wants to tell his friends about the Hidden Paradise he’s discovered: the very fact of giving a name - or a face - to the place you love changes it till it becomes a place you hardly like. Talk about how unspoiled somewhere is, and you’re almost inviting its despoliation. When someone gives you the address of the unknown Shangri-La he’s found, you’re forced to wonder whether he’s serving its interests or his own.

“It’ll be like another Bali, mate,” the blond, bearded surfer said over morning coffee at Jelenga Bungalows in Scar Reef. “Give it five years. You can’t create more land, Bali is maxed out. Bali is still one great place, but this is the new paradise,” he enthused pointing to the white sand beach behind us and the long swells rolling in, beams of sunlight bouncing off the waves.

It’s the relentless search for another tropical paradise. Who hasn’t dreamed of a secluded beach with gentle waves lapping the shore and powder blue skies dotted with pastel clouds drifting lazily along on their cosmic path? Adrian Vickers has written of the manufacturing of paradise on the island of Bali. And for over a million visitors a year, Bali serves as that romantic representation of paradise. One of the most recent of a spate of memoirs about how a Westerner discovered Bali is titled, A Patch of Paradise: A Woman’s Search for a Real Life in Bali. For Gaia Grant her paradise consists of living by the beach while keeping her international consulting business going via the internet.

You can live out your tropical island fantasies in Bali laying by the pool or on the beach sipping a Mai Tai while a gentle breeze carries you off to dreamland. But just as you are about to reach that altered level of consciousness, the tour bus unloads a new group from the airport. Oh well, you can always listen to the new arrivals accounts of their plane trip, how much hotter it is than they thought it would be, and oh, by the way, do you know a good place to buy cheap sarongs? OK, if you want to experience the East without leaving the West, but if you really want to get off to a remote tropical island where you can lay on a pristine white sand beach with only yourself, your thoughts, and a few cold beers that you stashed away in your backpack, then you need to get yourself off to Sumbawa, Indonesia.

Sumbawa is one of the largest of the 13,700 plus islands in the Indonesian archipelago. It lies to the east of Bali and Lombok, and is larger than the two combined. Administratively Sumbawa is part of West Nusa Tenggara along with Lombok. Despite its size, Sumbawa has a population of around one million, less than a third of the population of Bali. Lacking the exotic and colorful aspects of Balinese Hinduism, Sumbawa is known to tourists mostly for its world class surfing. During the dry season (April to November) a lot of dust is blown up and around. Strong winds blow in off the ocean, and the lush green hills, mountains and valleys turn a dusty brown. When the rainy season returns an amazing transformation takes place and the island reverts to verdant jungle once again

Wayne and I take leave of the restaurant and wander the twenty meters down to the beach. A physically imposing German couple is just paddling up on the beach after a morning of catching waves. She, tall, blonde and falling out of an impossibly small bikini, shouts up at Wayne and I, “Yeah, waves very good today. You come out later?” I laugh at her enthusiasm, not used to seeing tourists on this rugged, physically imposing island. “I don’t surf,” I yell, she gives me a shrug and flops down on the sand next to her partner.

Sumbawa is known in the surfing world as one the great surf spots with good surfing year round. Surfers come from as far away as Brazil just to surf Sumbawa.

Culturally and physically, Sumbawa belongs more to Eastern Indonesia than to the West. It lies east of the Wallace Line named after Sir Alfred Russell Wallace, the English naturalist. Wallace proposed the boundary in the 1860s to mark the division between Asian and Australian flora and fauna: to the west of the line are flora and fauna related to Asian species, while those on the east side are related to Australian species. Wallace particularly noted a distinct difference in the bird populations of Bali and Lombok. Birds on Bali being of the Asian variety, while birds on Lombok were related to those from New Guinea and Australia.

Sumbawa lies within the Ring of Fire, a string of volcanoes encircling the Pacific Ocean. It is a mountainous island with deep ridges and fertile, green valleys. Sumbawa is the home of the volcano, Tambora. The 1815 eruption of Mt.Tambora was the largest in historic time in spite of the common assumption that the Krakatoa (also in Indonesia) eruption was the largest. Before the eruption, Tambora was 4,000 meters tall, five days later it was 2,743 meters. About 150 cubic kilometers of ash were erupted and fell as far as 800 miles away. An estimated 92,000 people were killed by the eruption. Of this 92,000, 10,000 deaths were directly related to the bomb impacts, tephra fall, and lava flows. The other 82,000 deaths were caused by starvation, disease, and hunger. The concussions from the explosion were felt 1,000 miles away. The debris that coated the stratosphere affected the climates of North America and Europe causing cool temperatures, crop failures, and a resultant lack of food. This was known as the “Year Without a Summer.” The rapid settlement of the Midwest in the US is sometimes attributed to the effects on New England of the Year Without a Summer. Desperate New Englanders fled the cold temperatures and terrible growing climate for the Midwest. During the Year Without a Summer, the incessant rain in Northern Europe forced a party containing Mary Shelley to stay indoors during their holiday. During this dismal period, she wrote Frankenstein.

Wayne decides that its time to get in a sampan and head out beyond the break to catch some waves. I grab my motorbike to head up the coast to the district capital of Sumbawa Besar for some needed shopping and a small road trip. The 125cc Honda has just enough power to access most places on the island. Still another 125cc of power would help on some of the steeper inclines in the mountainous south of the island. The 8km road from the Jelenga Beach Cottages is one of the odder roads in a country of odd roads. Parts of the road are nominally paved with a thin asphalt cover, but then suddenly the paved road gives way to a dirt trail studded with rocks and loose gravel. As I slowly navigate a thin trail of clear dirt on the road, an asphalt-covered stretch suddenly appears again. Just as I slip into third gear, the asphalt gives way to dirt once again. I remember what Pak Memed from the bungalows told me this morning about the road. “Yeah, the government will make a very nice road for tourists to use so that it will help our special friends.” These words strike a memory node and I can see my neighbor telling me the same thing about the government making us a new road from our village in Sekongkang to the main market town of Maluk. That was two years ago; the partially constructed road now is favorite trail for hashers and water buffalo. I hit the main road and snake my way up along the coast to the small town of Taliwang.

Taliwang is a growing village just off the coast. The area is best known for its spicy grilled chicken called ayam Taliwang. If you are a chicken lover, this is a treat not to be missed. Taliwang is somewhat unique for having no large ethnic Chinese merchant class. Stories are many about what happened to the Chinese, but their place in the social structure has been taken over by Indonesian Arabs. For me Taliwang’s significance lies in having a certified Honda repair shop where I take my bike to be serviced every three months.

I pull in to the Honda shop and find only one bike waiting to be serviced. I put my bike up on the concrete slab that serves as a waiting area. The manager of the shop greets me as the few customers have a good stare at the rare bule (white person) in this area. A short young guy with a wispy beard and a New York Yonkees (!) shirt pokes his buddy and says bule masuk kampung, the name of a popular TV show about an American who moves in to a Javanese village and falls in love with a beautiful local girl. I turn, look him in the eyes while smiling, and say, “Sudah nikah, sudah ada banyak anak-anak mas (I’m already married and have a lot of kids). Everyone laughs and goes back to watch the soap opera on the small TV stuck in the corner of the waiting room.

The relaxed pace of life on Sumbawa reflects its agricultural base. The daily life cycle corresponds closely to the rising and setting of the sun. Motorized traffic adjusts itself to the ambling gate of water buffalo, goats, Sumbawan horses, and Balinese cows. Honk all you want a herd of water buffalo knows who controls the road, and they take their time as they move from one grazing area to the next. Southwest Sumbawa is characterized by the free-range animals that wander alongside the road in search of a good feed. The imprudent driver who happens to kill one of these road hogs will be required to make restitution to the owner. As I discovered a few months ago, even throwing rocks at beasts grazing on my own property has a high probability of landing me in trouble.

A short thirty minutes and my bike is expertly serviced. Giving my farewells to the boys in the shop, I head north for Sumbawa Besar again. I pass through Seteluk just up the road. Seteluk is another small, but developing village with a number of attractive new houses along the main road. I have a British acquaintance who lives there, but I don’t have his number so I cruise on through up the road. Just south of the harbor of Poto Tano, the road improves dramatically and the landscape changes drastically suddenly becoming drier and brown. As I climb a hill, I get a view of the north coastline and see that I am about to hit flat land as I work my way over to Alas.

Unlike islands to the west of Sumbawa, the effects of Hindu and Buddhist cultures are minimal in Sumbawa, and although the island is predominantly Muslim, the role of adat (traditional culture and law) is still very strong. Although Sumbawa is predominately Muslim, it has developed a reputation, partially due to inaccurate reports in popular travel guides, for being oppressively conservative. In fact along the north coast on the road from the harbor, Poto Tano, to Sumbawa Besar, the regional capital, many Hindu and Christian neighborhoods are built skirting the main road.

The road from the Poto Tano turnoff to Sumbawa Besar is a newly asphalted wonder with a dividing line. I take the bike up to 100 and turn my San Francisco Giants hat backward to keep it from flying off my head. The wind whips around my sunglasses and my eyes begin to tear. As I enter the outskirts of Alas, I’m amazed that the town that I have been making fun of to my friends from Alas is, in fact, a fairly good sized town with something close to 20,000 people and a tennis court along the main road. I slowly cruise through town checking out the shops to see what goods they are selling. I hear my name being shouted over and over. Generally I ignore this because an Indonesian word that sounds similar to my name means “keep going”, and I’ve been embarrassed many times by stopping and looking around to see who is beckoning me. This time, however, I turn and see one of my colleagues from school. I hop off the bike and apologize for all of my cracks about Alas. Yuni laughs and gives me a “I told you so” look. The sight of a bule talking to an attractive young Indonesian women causes a number of passersby to stop and ask what’s going on. I get slightly self-conscious, but just as I’m wondering if I’m upsetting some local sensibility, Yuni’s handsome young fiancée appears in tennis gear and we have a short chat. But I’m on a mission to buy some circuit breakers and have a strong need for an ice-cold beer. Yuni tells me that it will take two more hours driving until I reach Sumbawa Besar. I sigh and take my leave.

Sumbawa’s remoteness is due to the difficulties of getting to the island. The common route for the surfing backpacker crew is to take the ferry from Padangbai, Bali, to Lombok, travel overland in Lombok to the eastern seaport and then take another ferry to Sumbawa, ending up in Poto Tano. From there transportation is somewhat problematic and depends on the final destination in Sumbawa. Getting to Sumbawa Besar is easy, as there are plenty of buses that ply that route; getting down the west coast is another problem. There are occasionally buses that run down the coast, but they don’t cross on each ferry, so there can be quite a wait at the harbor. The other option is to take an ojek, a motorcycle taxi, down the coast road. Because of the distance, the price is steep and the ride less than comfortable, but it will get you there usually in less than two hours.

The largest city on the island is Sumbawa Besar. Because of the geography of Sumbawa, it is basically two islands: the western side of the island dominated by Sumbawa and the eastern side centered around Bima. The languages spoken by residents of these two areas are completely different.

I arrive in Sumbawa Besar and make my way to Hotel Tambora that is owned by a Balinese businessman who has interests in the southwest part of the island as well as in Sumbawa Besar. The hotel is basic for a tourist’s needs, but seems to be popular with Indonesian business travelers. My small air-conditioned room with a tiny bathroom complete with a cracked Western style toilet and a television costs about USD 10 per night. As I’m only staying for a day, the room will serve my purposes. It’s Sunday and my goal is to buy three 25-amp circuit breakers for the house. I ask the check-in clerk if she can recommend a shop and, as is common in Indonesia, she calls one of the staff to accompany me. He makes it clear that we need to go immediately because the stores will be closing at 1:00 and won’t open until 4:30. On inquiring about the reason for this unusual closing time, Ari tells me it’s because of Sunday church services in a tone of voice that implies this is a common fact of life. I find it amusing that on the island with a reputation of being a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, shops should close for Christian services. Just when I start to think that I understand Indonesia, some new information arrives to bring me back to reality. I love this country.

Next month- the return trip and a look at the southwest villages.

International Schools and Breaking the Cocoon Effect

by

Bruce E. Pohlmann

The Kabar article on international education raised a number of important questions for students, teachers, parents and administrators who are involved in international schools. Rather than addressing all of them, I’d like to restrict myself to the question about the possibility that an international school acts as a cocoon that insulates students from the realities of the host country.

International school students often come from wealthy families, or families in which the parents have some specialized knowledge that enables them to command a relatively large salary. Accordingly, international students often live in gated, closed communities, or they live in similarly isolated communities built by mining or oil companies. Thus, these students tend to be physically isolated from the life of the community both because of security and/or geographical needs.

 If students are not engaged with the host country, they are losing a unique educational opportunity to understand their own culture better by learning about another at the experiential level.  I believe that international schools can, and should, teach their students as much as possible about the host culture, and to insure that this is done, that needs to be codified within the curriculum. In addition to that, the role of teachers and parents are key to a student developing an understanding and appreciation of Indonesian culture.

First, the curriculum. Out of the four international schools that I’ve worked in, three followed a United States oriented curriculum. While there were international elements interlaced through the curricula, they were predominately American. An example would be the school in which I worked in Pakistan. Most of our students could get through the elementary and middle school years with a minimum knowledge of the local culture. Even though the student population was predominately Pakistani, the intellectual paradigm was based on U.S. cultural norms. Our students had a greater understanding of United States history than they did of Pakistani history. Some teachers were obviously more interested in the local culture than others, and they tended to find ways to introduce this in their classes. A curriculum that was weighted more heavily towards Pakistan would have given our students a more thorough understanding of, and appreciation for, Pakistan.

The school where I am currently teaching has what we consider to be an international curriculum, and Indonesian Studies is a large part of that; science, social studies, and, of course, Bahasa Indonesia classes all support giving our students a strong academic understanding of the Indonesian culture. Students from Kindergarten through Grade Eight take a one term course each year in Indonesian Studies as one component of our Social Studies curriculum. This is in addition to their Bahasa Indonesia courses. Additionally, our students join together with students from the national school in sporting activities. On a local level, that is outside of the mining community, we have had several cultural exchanges focusing on dance and music. We continue to work on ways to integrate our students, as much as possible, with the Indonesian culture, both nationally and locally.

The role of parents is vitally important as well. If students pick up a negative tone about the country from their parents (“I can’t wait to get back to the U.S., Australia, etc,” or “these Indonesians…”), then it’s going to be difficult to break through that, as the result is often students who live in a little world of their own. Parents who take their kids on vacation within the host country to see the sights, sample the food, and learn about the culture are sending a message to their children that the local culture should be valued. By being supportive of the school curriculum including Bahasa Indonesia classes, parents help work against the cocoon effect. 

Teachers are obviously also a key factor in combating the cocoon effect. This is done in several ways. First, by effectively delivering the curriculum, teachers can help students develop an understanding of the host culture. Most of our teachers bring local resources and cultures into their classes so as to broaden our students’ exposure to the wide diversity of Indonesia. For example, our art teacher has brought in local potters and weavers to instruct students on how Indonesian artisans develop their crafts. These types of experiential activities are powerful forms of cross-cultural interaction.

It is by breaking through the cocoon effect that international schools help develop citizens who will have a more global outlook than their parents’ generation, and that should be a vital part of every international school’s mission.

Getting Out of Dodge: Teaching and Living Overseas

When I left San Francisco in 1989, I never imagined that I would still be living overseas 16 years later. As the Grateful Dead say, it’s been a long, strange trip. In 1989 my eldest son was just graduating from high school and over the years I have watched (albeit from a distance) him graduate from college, go to law school, become a lawyer and get married. My eldest daughter is about to turn 14 and is on the verge of becoming a young woman, and the baby of the family will start Grade 1 in a few months. My two other children, Rebecca, 11, and Sam, 8, get bigger every day. For four long years, I lived and worked in Pakistan while my family stayed at home in Bali. It wasn’t the ideal life, but it was one of the realities of being a teacher on the international circuit.

But, absence from family and friends is one of the downsides of living overseas. You miss many major events - births, deaths, graduations and marriages. Sometimes it’s just impossible to get away from work long enough to go back “home” to attend; other times it’s just too expensive. The revolutions in technology since I have been overseas have made communication much easier. There are web pages to share photos on, emails and chat rooms and instant messengers and SMS that help keep you in touch. When I first started my overseas teaching career on the island of New Guinea, it took two weeks for letters to reach the States and two weeks for them to get back. We didn’t have telephone access then and had to rely on telexes for important information. Well, things have gotten better for those of us living overseas.

If you are in love with traveling, working overseas is great. Once upon a time, I loved airplanes and international airports and all the little things that went with living and teaching overseas. Now, the less I travel the better. Taking the motorbike in from the village where I live to the mining community where I teach is about all the traveling that I want to do.

Life overseas includes great beaches, incredible sights, exotic foods, opportunities to learn new languages and cultures. But, it also includes risks. Since I have been teaching overseas, the following events have occurred: the Gulf War, 9/11 (our expat personnel were evacuated for almost four months), the war in Afghanistan (see above), the war in Iraq redux, the overthrow of the Suharto regime in Indonesia (school stayed open), a military coup in Pakistan (we had the day off), the Bali bombing (I was in Pakistan dealing with the terrorist activities that follow), the Jakarta bombing(s), numerous terrorist acts in Pakistan (we delayed the return of teachers one time for a week), the uprising of the local “natives” in Papua (we had a week off), the shootings of American teachers in my former school in Papua (I was in Pakistan during this time), the riots in Bali following the election of Gus Dur to the presidency of Indonesia (my wife called me in Pakistan to give me a blow-by-blow account of the craziness in Bali), and more other “minor” incidents that I barely remember. Then, too, there were the natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and drought. You have to pay for your ticket to paradise sometimes.

So with my history overseas out of the way, if you’re still interested in teaching overseas here are the big five questions that I regularly get:

1.        How do you go about getting a job teaching overseas?

2.        How much do overseas’ jobs pay?

3.        Are there positions in developed countries or only in remote or “dangerous” locations?

4.        What is it like teaching overseas?

5.        Do you think that I’ll like teaching overseas?

How do I go about getting a teaching position overseas?

There are really two basic categories in overseas’ teaching: teaching English to non-English speakers, and teaching in an international school as a classroom teacher or specialist. I don’t know much about the first category as I am not trained as an ESL or EFL teacher, nor have I ever done any of that type of teaching. That being said, when things were uncertain in Pakistan just after 9/11, I began researching becoming an English teacher in Bangkok. There are a lot of positions in this field in Bangkok and elsewhere around Asia. The pay is generally not very good in comparison to teaching in an International school, but you can make a living and do some traveling if you don’t really want to save any money. Generally schools in Taiwan, Korea and Japan pay better than teaching in Thailand, but Thailand does have its attractions. Some schools in Thailand expect candidates to have teaching experience and a credential from a school that trains ESL/EFL teachers; others hire just about anybody. You can generally expect to have more luck getting a job with credentials and experience. There are many excellent web sites that discuss teaching in Thailand. These are just a few of the ones that I regularly visit just for information about Thailand and teaching:

1.        Ajarn: This is an excellent site that has up-to-date teaching positions listed along with salaries and benefits. You’ll also find information on living in Bangkok, how to rent a house/apartment and all sorts of other neat things. Ajarn is probably the best of the ESL sites that I have come across over the years.

2.        Stickman: Stickman is becoming something of a legend in the Bangkok expat community. He is an  English teacher who runs a popular web site with information about Bangkok and teaching. Stickman has a weekly column with information about current events in Bangkok. Warning: this web site has a lot of material about the “naughty nightlife” in Bangkok so if you are offended by stuff like this, you should probably use another site for information.

3.        Dave’s ESL Cafe: This site calls itself the “The Internet’s Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Students and Teachers from Around the World!” Lots of information here for the aspiring ESL/EFL teacher including a job center and places to obtain a TEFL certificate. There are also forums for students and teachers.

Finding a position in an international school is generally much more difficult than getting a job teaching English. The overseas teaching field is highly competitive. Most schools attend one of the main hiring fairs which are held several times a year. You can expect to need to have at least two years of experience and a current teaching credential. Many schools have IB programs and want IB experience. Some schools only hire Americans, others only British or Australian, but generally you will find a mix of nationalities in international schools especially in the large ones like Jakarta International School, Singapore American School, or the International School of Bangkok.

The main teaching fairs are run by International Schools Services, Search Associates, the European Council of International Schools, and Northern Iowa. I only have experience with ISS which was my employer for nine years. Fairs are usually quite crowded; teaching couples generally have an edge on single teachers as they can split up and cover twice the ground. Single parents are at an extreme disadvantage when looking for jobs overseas. Even singles without children are not hired by some schools. A lot of this has to do with housing considerations. You can find specific information on each of the organizations mentioned above on their web sites along with online forms that you can fill out or download. Writing directly to the schools is a good idea as it can help you pre-arrange an interview at one of the conferences. You can find more information about individual schools at my cyberbali.com web site.

Once you have some experience teaching in an international school, you enter in to a rather small world, and you have a good chance (if you’re good at your job and have had good experiences with your principal and/or superintendent/director) of getting a job without attending a fair. I’ve obtained my last two positions this way: once by having a former principal hire me directly and the second time by having him recommend me for another job. This saves you the considerable expense of attending a fair, not to mention the hassle and stress that goes along with these cattle markets.

How much do overseas’ jobs pay?

Salaries vary widely in overseas’ schools. Generally teaching English pays considerably less than working in an international school. English positions in Bangkok run from around 20,000 baht per month to 50,000. At the current exchange rate of about 40 baht per U.S. dollar, that means you would be making from between $500 to $1250 per month - not a whole lot of money. As I mentioned before, jobs in Taiwan, Korea and Japan pay more, but have a generally poor reputation for the quality of work experience. International school positions pay more, but there is a wide range in salaries depending on experience and location. Generally the more favorable the location, the lower the salary. Schools in South America and Africa usually don’t pay as well as schools in the Middle East. The small ISS or company schools in remote locations usually pay quite well and have some nice travel benefits. School ads in the ISS and TIE newspapers often have salary ranges listed. In some countries you have to pay local taxes on your salary; this is often covered by the school, but occasionally it isn’t. Americans teaching overseas don’t have to pay taxes on the salary that they earn outside of the country. A nice overseas salary would be something in the mid 40s range, tax-free of course.

Housing is a big issue for overseas’ teaching. Housing is usually provided or at least compensated for. I have lived in small bachelor type apartments, ranch style type houses that you would find in a US suburb, a really dingy flat in Pakistan and then in a much nicer three bedroom one while working at the same school. One of the most common complaints from teachers is about their housing. Some schools offer free cars, some will provide interest free loans if you want to purchase a car, while others have no transportation allowance included. At LAS, we were provided a car for $50 a month which went for service, insurance and fuel costs. Health insurance is usually provided for and some schools offer retirement benefits while many don’t.

Are there positions in developed countries or only in remote or “dangerous” locations?

There are international schools just about everywhere in the world. All of the major capitals of the world have international schools and most of them are quite large. Jakarta International School, for instance, has several thousand students and hundreds of teachers. My current school has 53 students. As I mentioned above, some of the remote schools pay quite well in order to attract teachers. Schools in Pakistan pay well because of the problems of attracting teachers to a country that is considered by many to be dangerous, although this is far from true. When you look for a school, you need to consider the cultural benefits as well as the financial ones. If you teach in Pakistan, you can make almost twice the salary that you would make teaching at Bali International, but you won’t be hanging out at the beach after school.

What is it like teaching overseas?

That varies from place to place. Big high-powered schools in major capitals with a student body whose parents include CEO’s and diplomats tends to be fairly stressful from what I have heard, but working in small schools can be just as stressful because of close parent contact and high expectations and demands. I’ve worked in a middle-sized school and three small schools, and I’ve enjoyed both experiences. My own preferences led me not to want to work in the larger schools, but I know teachers who have spent decades working in large schools and love it. There are certainly many more opportunities for entertainment, night life and shopping when you live in a large city.

Generally you can expect to have many of the same problems that you would have in a school in the States with homework, parents and administrators. You can also expect not to have to worry about gang violence, crazed people coming in off the street to shoot up the school, and all the other traumas of urban existence in the U.S. Some schools will have a large population of non-English speaking students. Drug problems may exist in larger schools, but are generally absent in the smaller schools.

Some schools follow a U.S. curriculum, others have an international one, and still others have a mix. Lahore American School followed a U.S. curriculum even though by the time that I left the school last June our student population was almost entirely made up of wealthy Pakistani students.

Teaching overseas offers a lot of opportunities for travel. For example, while I was teaching in Lahore, I would go back and forth to Bali on vacation and usually transited in Bangkok which I really enjoyed. Many of the teachers there explored the incredible Pakistan countryside and also vacationed in places like Malaysia, Burma, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam which were all quite accessible from Lahore except during the war in Afghanistan.

Will I Like Teaching Overseas?

To live overseas it is necessary to be flexible, particularly if you live in the developing world like I have. Problems with lack of water and electricity, poor sanitation, crowded public facilities, an absence of those special foods that you remember with fondness from your pre-expatriate days (like milk), slow or no internet connections, no telephone (one of the features of my village life in Sumbawa), difficulties buying gasoline are all part of the last 16 years. But, I can’t see myself moving back to America although I thought about it occasionally during my four years living alone in Pakistan.

Thoughts On Living in Bali

Some expatriates consider it paradise and, as they might say, thank the gods every day for the good fortune of being able to live in Bali. Others arrive with high hopes, ambitious plans, dreams of palm trees, blue surf, and friendly Balinese, and then become frustrated with the cultural differences and end up leaving bitter and poorer.

For people who can adapt to the significant personal and cultural differences, occasional confusing dealings with the Indonesian bureaucracy, lunatic drivers, the lack of a reliable infrastructure, and increasing pollution (depending on where in Bali you decide to live), Bali offers a truly unique culture with delightful surprises daily. There are lovely beaches (but certainly not the best in Indonesia or Southeast Asia), unique cultural experiences, a warm and pleasant climate, a resident expatriate community, a language that can be learned relatively easily, and, of course, the Balinese people.

Bali is changing as Western culture increasingly intrudes on the traditional culture, but outside of the tourist ghettos of Kuta, Legian, and Seminyak, traditional culture continues to hold its own. You might find that all of your neighbors are glued to the popular dramas on television each night, but if someone is holding a ceremony with dances and a shadow puppet play, they’ll turn off the TV and get out and enjoy the festivities

For expatriate families, there are several international schools in Bali although they can be rather costly: Bali International School  is the oldest international school on the island and has an excellent reputation; Australian International School  has a curriculum designed especially for Australian students; Canggu Community School , is a non-profit private school serving both the international and local communities in the South Bali area and uses the British National Curriculum and employs certified foreign teachers; Sunrise School , is another school in Bali that it is located in Kerobokan in the south of Bali – its website says that it has an international staff and curriculum, an IT room, a library, and art and science room, a small student-teacher ratio, and covers the years Kindergarten to Grade 8. The website has a map. For families who cannot afford the cost of an international school, it is possible to send children to the local schools, but teaching is in Indonesian, and the facilities are generally of low quality.

While potential expatriates don’t like to think of such unpleasant things as ill health or accidents, living in the tropics entails a certain amount of health hazards. During my fifteen years in Indonesia, I have contracted typhoid, amoebic dysentery, and malaria. Additionally, I’ve been in one semi-serious motorcycle accident, been stung by a scorpion, had my son fall out of a tree and suffer a triple fracture of his arm requiring surgery and the implant of three metal pins, and had my mother and father in-laws suffer major heart attacks. Then, too, my wife has had four children here. So what about medical facilities? I have an old tourist guide from the mid-1980s, which states that there are no x-ray machines on Bali. Fortunately, today medical facilities in Bali are much more developed than they were 15 years ago. There are local hospitals equipped to deal with most basic emergencies and illnesses. Some hospitals like Kasih Ibu in Denpasar are equipped for procedures that are more complicated. My son’s operation for his triple fracture was done at Kasih Ibu and, while expensive, the work was excellent as was the post-operative treatment. The south of Bali has international clinics like International SOS and the Bali International Medical Center (BIMC). For life-threatening illnesses, most expatriates fly to Singapore that is only a two-hour flight away. Medical insurance can be purchased which covers evacuation if necessary. Dental facilities in the south of Bali are quite acceptable, and a number of my students have had braces done in Bali. Some expatriates (like me), however, prefer to fly to Singapore or Bangkok for dental treatment. Bangkok, in fact, has an outstanding hospital that expatriates from all over the world use for yearly check-ups.

What is the cost of living like in Bali?

That all depends on what your lifestyle is like. The more Western you get, the higher your overhead will be. Electricity and telephone charges are relatively high. If you plan on having a large house with lots of lighting, you are going to be paying out some serious money. If you crave a lot of Western foods and material items, you will be paying more for them than you would back home. On the other hand, if you blend your lifestyle in with local realities, shop in local markets, and keep the overhead down, you can get by on a relatively modest income. For example, my family of six and a ravenous German Shepard gets by comfortably on about $1,500 a month.

Most expatriates have at least one Balinese employee, a pembantu (maid); many also have a driver and gardener as well. The cost of household help is quite reasonable. You can expect to pay between $40 to $70 a month for each person depending on their duties and experience. Many employers supplement their staff’s pay with contributions to their children’s education, gifts for ceremonies, and help with medical expenses when necessary.

What kinds of material goods are available there?

Bali has a variety of shopping opportunities. You can get all of the usual Asian fruits and vegetables in Bali like durian, rambutan, and jackfruit. Seafood is plentiful if you live by the coast although the cost for things like prawns has gone up a lot over the past decade as more and more of the catch goes to hotels and restaurants. The Balinese aren’t supposed to eat beef, and the Muslims aren’t supposed to eat pork. Both are available for the expatriate. If you regularly eat local dishes like nasi goring (fried rice) and mie goring (fried noodles), you’ll find that your food bill will be quite low.

Bali has the superstore, Makro, which sells just about everything. It’s a supermarket with a stock similar to what you would find in a Western supermarket. It also carries electronic goods like televisions and microwaves and music systems, tools, toys, clothes, and office supplies. You’ll find it full of Westerners buying items in bulk. Bali now has a number of computer stores, and it is cheaper to buy your computer and peripherals here than bring them in as customs charges an excessively high duty on imported electronics. If you really have the shakes and need to do some Western shopping check out the new malls down in the Kuta tourist area – there is even an Ace Hardware store there now.

While Bali doesn’t have cable tv, it does have a subscription satellite company, Indovision, which receives approximately 40 channels. You can buy inexpensive televisions or the more expensive large models. We recently purchased a 43-inch television for approximately $1000.

Transportation is another expense. The motorbike is the most common vehicle on the road. A 100 cc Honda goes for around $1200. Make sure that you get an international license before you leave your home country. Automobiles are relatively expensive in Bali, although several new inexpensive models have been released and can be purchased for as low as $10,000. Driving in Bali can be a harrowing experience, and if you are not a skilled driver, it would be worth your money (and your life) to hire a driver.

Can You Get Internet Access in Bali?

Yes, there are a number of ISPs in Bali. Generally, telephone lines in Bali are of poor quality and do not transmit data quickly. Internet access is relatively inexpensive. Some Internet Service Providers are: Wasantara net, Indosatnet, Meganet, and Indointernet. Internet access is best in the south of Bali. Additionally, there are many internet cafes in Bali.

Are there employment opportunities?

There are very few opportunities for employment in Bali. The Indonesian government is very strict about allowing foreigners to take jobs that Indonesians can do, and with the high level of unemployment that is only as it should be. That being said, if you are a hotel professional, an English language teacher, or a certified teacher from one of the Western countries, you may be able to find employment in Bali. My experience is in the teaching field, and positions for teachers are few and the competition is very stiff. The compensation is also considerably lower than what you would expect in your home country or another less desirable place, but it is more than enough to get by on.

What are the laws pertaining to owning property?

Stories are legion about foreigners who have been cheated out of their money and land when buying property in Bali. People tend to get starry-eyed and act with less caution than they would if there were buying property in their home country. You need to proceed slowly and with caution.

The laws have been slightly modified recently which offer more options to the foreigner who wishes to buy or lease property in Bali. The laws are complex enough that I will not try to explain them here. There are several websites that detail the regulations of property acquisition. The one thing that all of them have in common is their insistence that the buyer beware and find legal representation. A few web sites to consult are:

 Wonderful Bali, and Bali Information. 

Is there an available supply of housing, and what are the costs?

These days there is a plethora of housing options available in Bali that range from $1,000 a year Balinese-style houses to rent to million dollar villas to buy. It is now possible to find a house to fit any budget. A number of real estate companies have moved into the Balinese market over the past decade. A few examples (which I am only listing, not endorsing) are: Bali Karma Properties which sells and leases land and villas, as well as building swimming pools,etc., Bali Property Information and Tropical Homes: Bali’s Best Properties which is a very upscale real estate company. In addition to selling and leasing incredibly expensive luxury homes, Tropical Homes also has two bedroom apartments selling in the range of $80,000 to $135,000. While using these companies obviates the difficulties of looking for a place to live on your own, they tend to charge extremely high prices (compared with what you might be able to negotiate on your own, not to mention what an Indonesian would pay for the same property). An example is a five-room house located in the less popular north of Bali which has a Balinese-style bathroom and which lists for about $42,000.

What are the Rules for Foreigners Who Want to Live in Bali?

Indonesia changed its visa policy this February. Previously, tourists from many countries were granted a free 60 visa on arrival. The new law offers tourists from a limited number of countries visas on arrival for 30 days and at the cost of $25. Tourists from other countries must apply for a visa in their country before they arrive in Indonesia. It is possible to obtain 60 days visas for an additional fee if you apply in your home country. However, all of these visas are not appropriate for the potential expatriate. Many expatriates hold a social visa that is good for six months, but must be renewed monthly at the immigration office. Applicants for a social visa need an Indonesian sponsor. These visas are relatively inexpensive, but the monthly renewal can be time-consuming and irritating. A favored option is to use a visa service like Bali IDE that will take care of the paperwork you need to obtain the visa and then renew it for you monthly. There is a new retirement visa for people 55 years of age and older. Applicants for this type of visa need to have proof of a pension plan or sufficient funds in a bank account, health insurance, life insurance, proof of residence in a designated tourist area, and at least one Indonesian employee. Additionally there are several other visas – business, working permit – that can be obtained with the correct documentation and fees.

General Information on Bali

The following are a few web sites that have a wealth of information about living on Bali:

• Bali Blog - this is a daily blog written by an expatriate living in Bali. You can find information here about buying a car in Bali, real estate, shopping, hotels, and a variety of other things.
• Cyberbali.com - is my website about Bali, Papua, Sumbawa and Pakistan.
• Bali Portal - has an incredible number of links to web sites about Bali.

Living in Bali can be the experience of a lifetime, and there are many expatriates who have lived there blissfully for years. But like with any major lifestyle decision, caution needs to be exercised. I can’t tell you how many foreigners I have met over the past 15 years in Bali who arrived lock, stock and barrel and were gone within a year because they weren’t prepared for all the realities of living in Indonesia because in spite of what some expatriates like to pretend, Bali is still part of Indonesia with all of the good and bad that that situation encompasses. Come and visit, study the culture, do your research, talk to long-term expatriates, monitor the Bali forums on the internet, and then make your move if you feel that Bali is really for you. It could be the best thing that you’ve ever done for yourself.