Moving on

I came back from Burma long enough to go to court (a dodgy travel agent ran away with 3000$US. Yes, I won!) and to prepare my resume: I finally made it into the Bangkok recruitment fair. This is the best fair to attend if one wants to stay in Asia. I was undecided: South America would be a new adventure for me and a great opportunity to learn Spanish, but Asia now feels like home---or maybe that's just Singapore! Anyway, I figured by signing up for the Bangkok AND Boston fair (the latter being a more world-wide fair), I could afford to be picky about saying no to any job offer that didn't fit me to a T. If I found nothing interesting in Bangkok, I could go to Boston. If still not satisfied, I could always teach scuba diving in Asia for a year, relax and travel.

I was hot stuff at the fair. It felt good for a change to have schools chasing me, instead of the other way around. Hey, I am entitled to ride on my school's reputation, no? I've paid my dues, no? First Jakarta, with the scariest, most incompetent colleagues I've ever had (drugs, prostitutes, the works!). Then to Beirut, with PE colleagues that were a bit more qualified, but didn't believe that they could make a difference in these students' lives. They didn't care; this was a pay check, that's it. SAS has been wonderful, challenging me in a positive way, working with an exceptional group of teachers (we have about 20 PE teachers here) that really believe that all of us are life-long learners, that we will achieve great things if we work together and share our victories and our mistakes. Too bad my boss didn't see it that way. It was better for me to resign and I was confident I would find a school that was an even better match for me.

At the fair, before ever handing out my resume, I had over 1o requests for interviews. I only said no to the ones looking for an elementary PE teacher. I don't care how cool the countries or the schools are, I just can't be happy working ONLY with the little ones. I can handle a range of different ages (K-12) if it's a great offer, but if not, count me out! I had interviews with Dubai and Kuwait first, figuring these would be my "warm-up interviews", as I don't think I'd go back to the Middle East (never say never, though!). The others were from a variety of different places and the sizes of the schools were also very different from one offer to another: Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Chiang Mai and Bangkok, etc. Where would you have gone??? My first two choices: Shanghai American School, teaching full-time MS health education (yes, that includes sex ed!) and Jakarta International School, teaching MS dance (and a bit of PE).

People that have known me a long time would think "NO WAY IN HELL would Cat ever go back to Jakarta!!!" Well, as I said to my sister Colette when I finally left at the end of my first year overseas, "I would only consider returning here if I could work at JIS". Well, it happened: JIS made me a great offer and Shanghai wanted to interview other people before making a possible offer. Should I have just held out for the Boston fair? No freakin' way! Yes, Jakarta will still be polluted in every sense of the word, but I will be working in a school with a great reputation (same type as SAS), I will be moving to a place with lovely, friendly people and to a country where I already hold my own when it comes to the language. Even my Indonesian maid in Singapore wants to follow me to Jakarta. Imagine that!

It will be so hard to leave Singapore. It breaks my heart every time I think about it. I thought I'd be here for the next 10 years. I have great friends at work, in the lindy community and the dragon boat team. I will miss all of it, but all of this will be a 2-hour flight away. Life throws weird things at us, and I've learned that whenever a door closes behind me, there are always a couple of others that are just ready for me to jump through...

What kind of trip would it be...

...if I actually didn't go diving??? The only non-diving trips I have had in the past 3 years were to Sweden (both of those summers, I went diving just before leaving for Europe, though) and that one week I visited Alex in Istanbul. So as you would expect, here are a few of my diving pictures:

Porcelaine crab in anemone.

Visibility was very poor on this day, and that's why the water appears green. I have seen many baracudas on my dives, even large schools of them but this was the first time I actually swam IN the school. It was awesome!

Don't let the pink and pretty colors fool you: the stone fish is hard to detect among the coral and is very venemous. Divers and swimmers, beware!

CA, voici d'autres photos, juste pour toi! ;-)

Sunrise over Bagan, Christmas morning. The night before, I had a trishaw "driver" take me to see the sunset. This was a bad spot for it, as it was one of the temples closest to the river; there were no outlines of pagodas in front of the colorful sky. I was upset, but when I turned my back to the river, the view was amazing! What a great spot this would be to see the sunrise, I immediately thought. I marked the spot on my map and vowed to come the next morning, hoping I'd have this little temple all to myself. I rented a bike for the next day and went to bed early. Next morning, I tore the thick blanket off of my bed (Burma before sun rise is freezing at this time of the year), put all the clothes I could find on and set off to find my temple on my bike. At 5:00am, it was pitch black and I looked ridiculous: I had a frontal head lamp strapped to my forhead (good purchase!), trying to peddle with a huge bag on my back, struggling to hold the blanket around me at the same time as I'm holding the bar handle of the bike and figuring out where I was.... I found my temple unlocked and deserted. I managed to find the steps to make it to the top and got ready for a long wait. The light show began maybe 20 minutes later. The colors were beautiful and the fog starting rolling in from the river. It was magical.... until a huge tourist bus turned the corner and parked right in front of "my" temple... I was now stuck with about 20 loud-mouth German tourists... Oh well, at least I had some time up there by my lonesome! I took this picture before the noisy tourists spoiled the moment.

A Pa Dong Karen woman, from an almost mythical Burmese-Thai tribal group better known by their nickname, the Long Neck Tribe. The women's necks aren't actually stretched. Rather, the weight of the rings gradually crushes the women's collar bones, producing the illusion of long necks. At least, that's the official explanation. In person, the effect is sufficiently striking to overwhelm thoughts of any rational explanation. The necks seem eerily elongated. The women look like giraffes. A few young girls also wear the brass rings, but the tradition seems to be dying out. The costume is so elaborate, with the head scarf, the rings around the neck, as well as the knees and wrists, etc. I asked the man standing next to me what the Pa Dong Karen men wore. He laughed and told me that he was from the tribe and I was taking photos of his mother and wife! They don't really have a traditional costume. They just wear the longi (a kind of sarong/pareo), like all other Burmese man. His sister had decided not to wear the rings. It was up to every female to decide if they wanted to adhere to this tradition or not, no arm-twisting! This lady in the photo was so cool. We joked for a while and I sat next to her, trying to fit both of us in the frame of my camera. Not great...

Yeah, I know: not a great shot and a bit culturally insensitive.... But doesn't it look like I pasted her head on the top of those rings??? So surreal!

Details of my trip to Burma, part 1

I had planned to spend Christmas in Canada, something I haven't done since I left--6 years already! Two weeks before the holidays, an altercation at work made me decide to resign from this school. I love Singapore and SAS, but there has to be a place out there where I won't feel like my boss is out to get me....

So this means I will probably have to go to Boston for a recruitment fair (www.search-associates.com). I tried to get into the Bangkok recruitment fair, but it was full and past the deadline to register. It would have been the best fair to attend to stay in Asia. Back to the topic: if I fly to Montreal and then fly to Boston not even 6 weeks later, that's major $$$.... Better to just call the whole thing off and travel locally for the holiday, then spend my hard-earned cash to fly to the States in February. That's when I decided to go to Myanmar, before tourism messes up the country even more! To find out more about why "the decision to travel to Myanmar should not be taken lightly", check out http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/asia/myanmar and scroll down.


I flew into Rangoon (also Yangoon, so confusing!) and spent the first day just strolling around. Went to see my first sunset at a temple, something I did every dusk during my stay in the Northern part (12 days). I met a "novice" there (a young monk--17 years old). We chatted for a few hours and I finally left him behind because I was getting serious hunger pangs! Next day, more strolling and I arranged for tickets to Mandalay for the next morning.

Mandalay was "OK", but nothing great. I started my day meating yet ANOTHER monk during sunset at a temple (what is it with these teenage monks and women travelling by themselves???). We chatted for quite a while. He invited me back to his school--7000 students!!! but not all monks---where I visited their new free clinic, catering to whomever needed medical care. I also taught an impromptu English class, which was quite fun. I was commenting to the headmaster (OLD monk) that Owen's English (my new young friend) was quite good. He said that Owen wasn't shy and that enabled him to learn many things. I was asked what I was doing the next day and was offered Owen as a guide, in exchange for a meal and a lot of English conversation. Wow, best offer I had had since my arrival! We had a great day and Owen knew many things about his country, both historically and politically (who knew these monks would be so political?). Here's a picture of him the day we met.

My last evening in Mandalay, I went to see a traditional puppet show. It was pretty cool; once in a while, they would pull up the panel hiding the puppeteers, so you could see them manipulating the strings and all. Next morning, I left at 5 am to take the ferry down to Bagan. This took the whole day and I was FREEZING! ---I don't know how if I'll ever be able to live in a cold country again; I'm such a wuss when it comes to the cold! Anyway, beautiful views of the life on the river and towards our arrival points, we could see the outline of Bagan's ancient site on the banks of the river.

I spent 5 days in Bagan. I would say most tourists spend 2 or 3 days there, but how do they take in this wonderful place in such a short time? I even brought a book along and would find a deserted temple, sit and read. It was just a magical place to be. Bagan is said to have had 13 000 temples built between 1100 and now. About 2200 are left.

"There are two preeminent ancient religious cities in Southeast Asia: Bagan in Burma and Angkor in Cambodia. Both sites are notable for their expanse of sacred geography and the number and size of their individual temples. For many visitors Bagan is the more extraordinary of the two cities and this because of the view. The ruins of the more than one hundred Angkor temples stand alone and isolated in thick jungles, and only from the top of the tallest temples it is not possible to see others in the distance. Sprawling across a vast dusty plain, the ruins of Bagan are unhidden. There being no trees to obstruct the view, one may gaze over forty square miles of countryside, upon literally thousands of temples. (from: http://www.sacredsites.com/asia/burma/bagan.html) I don't know if this picture actually gives you a clue of how many temples are out there.... If you look between the temple at the center of the picture and the temple on the right, what you see in the background is not an outline of trees, but the outline of more temples, stupas and pagodas.


You can see a few of my Bagan pictures in the next posting (I put them there yesterday, so just scroll down). I have hundreds of picture, but these are just a few. If you want more, just let me know and I'll put them on Kodak Gallery.

My last destination before heading to the beach was Inle Lake. Sadly, I had to change my plane ticket and only had 24 hours in Inle, so it was a mad rush to see what I wanted to see! After landing, I found a cheap homestay, dumped my stuff and hired a boat and a guide. He took me all around the lake, where I saw the fishermen, the temples and floating markets, the long-neck women, etc., etc. Wonderful day and I was exhausted when I hit the sack. Next morning was so cold that I would not have been surprised to open the door to my room to see some snow on the ground. Hohoho?! Argh, why did I only bring a thin sweater???

Christmas in Burma

Smoking at the temple...

Sunset on Bagan

worshipper in front of reclining buddah.