7 Month Thailand Update — Part 1 — Work
It occurred to me that I’ve been living in Thailand for 7 months and it’s been some time since my last update. As I started thinking about all the things I want to share, I realized there was more than one post’s worth of information, so I’ll be writing more in the coming days.
If you’ve been following for a while, you might remember my post months ago on the challenges of staying in Thailand long-term. Reasonably, the Thai government isn’t a fan of people staying here indefinitely on tourist visas, so they limit the number you can get. I was coming dangerously close to my cap, so I decided to try to find work and get a long-term work visa.
My first plan was to find a teaching job at an actual school. They are desperate for English teachers here and are willing to pay a premium for native speakers.
It turns out, having a degree and speaking English is a golden ticket here.
I applied to a couple of different schools several months ago and quickly had multiple interviews and offers. Even though the pay was excellent for Thailand, the schools demanded long hours and included serious commutes. After considering the commitment required, I decided to hold out for something better.
My next attempt was looking for teaching jobs in tutoring centers. Again, all of my interviews led to immediate job offers. The schedules were much more flexible and the pay was still good. I knew I was on a better track with this attempt.
I tried working at a couple different places, but was not enjoying it at all. I was mostly babysitting large groups of 5-year-olds and there was very little teaching happening. It was a job and I was getting paid, but I was not having a good experience.
I was planning on sticking it out any way to get my long-term visa (My employer required a probation period before helping me helping me do that), but another tutoring center that I had applied to back in June contacted me out of the blue.
Their other English teacher had left suddenly and they were desperate for a replacement. They offered me a 40% raise, a still flexible but bigger schedule (25 hours per week), and all of the classes were one-on-one sessions rather than large classes. In addition, they were willing to help me get my visa immediately. It was an easy yes for me.
I’ve been working at the new school for one month now and I couldn’t be happier with my decision to move. My boss and coworkers are great. (They even threw me a surprise birthday party 3 weeks after I started working there.) The students are excellent and it’s an all-around great fit for me.
In addition to teaching English at the school, they’ve also tasked me with side projects for their former students. The biggest one so far has been summarizing an entire college-level textbook on world history from the 16th to 19th centuries for a student currently studying in America that is struggling with the dense material. As I enjoy reading anyway, getting paid for it is a huge bonus.
That’s my day job now.
I’m still working with my online personal training clients, and as always, really enjoying that. I’ve been doing a little web design as well and have some bigger projects in the works on that front.
While I haven’t been posting on Medium regularly, I’m still writing every day. One of my mentors helped me get one of my larger articles published on a popular fitness website, and to my everlasting surprise, I was paid for writing the article. Since then, I’ve been focused on writing for that website and I’m enjoying expanding on deeper thoughts that I hope will have a bigger impact.
As a child, my dad would make me write paragraphs every day for extra practice after school. He realized early in his career that communication was the most valuable skill you could develop. Seeing as I’m now a paid writer and teaching communication to others, I can see why he gave me extra homework.
I’ll save the long-term plans for later piece of this update, but for those that are putting pieces together from this one, I will be here for a while longer. My original plan was to stay at least through the end of 2018, but life happens and it will be best for me to stay at least one more. My teaching contract is through September 2019, so I fully expect to be here at least that long. I’ll expand on that soon.
For those considering living abroad but is worried about making money overseas, getting a job teaching English is incredibly easy. It took me a few tries to find the right fit, but this job has afforded me a very comfortable life here. I work 20–30 stress-free hours per week (much of it from home), earn enough to pay all my bills here, and even save around some money every month. It’s a pretty easy life.
So that’s the work update! I’ll write about my latest travel adventures tomorrow.
Brian is on a mission to bring reasonableness to the health and fitness. In an industry consumed with extremes and insanity, Brian offers practical and sensible strategies that create lasting long-term results developed over years as a coach and through personal necessity. He offers online personal training through his website.
