From Phang Nga With Love

Life in a real Thai city

Shell and I have settled in Phang Nga which is about 90 minutes north of Patong Beach, Phuket and 90 minutes northwest of Ao Nang, Krabi.

It’s pretty quiet here but the scenery is stunning and its really great to be away from all the other tourists because we are both pretty tired of being offered tailor-made suits.

Shell was offered the job the day we arrived in Phuket and after spending the following day checking out Phang Nga city, we made the following conclusions:

• The wage – 30,000 THB/month (£550) is about 3x what the other teachers are on and it should allow us to live pretty comfortably.
• Phang Nga might be quiet, but Phuket and Krabi aren’t far away.
• The contract expires in March (Thai summer holidays) at which point the agency has implied more work will be available. If we like it, we can stay. If we hate it, we can leave.

I’m trying to get some momentum going with my web development work but if I complete two websites each month, I will earn as much as Shell will. Ideally, there will be more work available (I’d really like to save some money whilst living here cheaply) but I’ve been making as many friends as possible and have offered to volunteer for a week at a local quad-bike safari tour in the jungle.

Our TEFL teacher had worked at one time in Ecuador teaching the local tour guides English. I’m going to look into this over the next week and report back soon.

As for houses, I looked at two today…no good. We will be looking at another two tomorrow.

Is Koh Samui a Long-Term Option?

Koh Samui is great for a holiday but will we be able to live and work here long-term?

(Thanks to everyone who recommended what we should do on our stay here. Keep them coming!)

Shell and I met up with a family friend yesterday who has lived here on the island for 4 years. We discussed the logistics of life here and he offered us some words of wisdom.

The past few months have been a bit hectic and since arriving here we haven’t really changed pace. He told us to calm down, take a week or two’s holiday and take in the island in its entirety.

Adjust to the Thai pace of life

After adjusting to the pace of life here, he felt that we’d be able to make a better choice about whether or not it was somewhere that we could live over the next year.

We are staying in Chaweng at present (tourist town) but will be venturing out into Lamai and Bo Phut in the next few days. Chaweng features most of the bars and shops on the island, but unfortunately a lot of people who shove flyers into your hand and attempt to march you into their shop for a suit.

Out of the tourist trap

Apparently, once we get a bit of colour we won’t draw as much attention but it could get tiresome if we had to put up with it every time we came into town.

That said, there is a Tesco and a Makro on the outskirts of town and once we get a feel for the place we might be able to avoid the more touristy parts of Chaweng.

All in all, we are still unsure about living here for 12 months.

We could do a lot worse than Samui as a holiday destination but we are still unsure about living here for a full year. While I can carry on creating web sites for the stars of Britain’s Got Talent and X-Factor, Shell says that she isn’t too keen on living as a kept woman.

We’ve got some cool videos of our adventure so far but “there isn’t enough internet” at the current hotel. I’ve heard that Coco Blues Bar has good free WiFi though. I promise to upload some videos to the blog and pics to facebook very soon folks.

Please leave your comments at the end of this post. Joanne, please keep your comments to yourself.

Call us for 0.5p/minute in Thailand!

You can now call us in Thailand cheaply from the UK.

Dial this number: 0844 200 50 50

Then enter our mobile numbers when asked:

John: 00668862301408
Michelle: 0066886230147

The provider says that it should cost 0.5p/minute. Hope to hear from you all soon!

Which TEFL course should you choose?

When Michelle and I decided that we would be going to Thailand to teach English, we found out that you don’t really need any qualifications to get teaching work. However, with a degree and TEFL qualification, you can find work more easily.

The list of different TEFL qualifications was mind-boggling but our decision was easy. The course had to be short and it had to be cheap. This limited us to a 20-hour weekend course. Not the most prestigious or internationally-recognised of courses, but something that gave us an introduction to teaching English and a pretty certificate we could wave in the faces of prospective employees.

There were a few companies offering a weekend course that suited us but i to i were very helpful when I called them up to ask for a deal and were not at all pushy when selling. The course was a little more expensive than some others but we had a good feeling about the company and were not dissappointed when we arrived.

Teaching took place at Jury’s Inn, Manchester and was pretty intense (9am-8pm, 9am-6pm). Our tutor’s name was Meryl Burgess who kept things moving along nicely and had an incredible ability to teach without me being aware that I as learning until she stopped and analysed an activity we had just done.

The other students were great to work with and it was exciting to discuss everyone’s thoughts, plans and motivations. Meryl was also able to discuss her own experiences of teaching abroad and gave us an advice session on finding work.

I can only fault the course on its length. 20-hours allows you only to scratch the surface but is thouroughly enlightening nonetheless and you aren’t going to squeeze any more time from a weekend anyway. If you do plan on doing a weekend course, you won’t go wrong with i to i, but make sure you get plenty of rest beforehand!

Where To Teach English Abroad? Thailand!

Why did John Peden and Michelle Aitken decide to teach English in Koh Samui, Thailand?

As you read in my last post, my girlfriend and I will be leaving for Thailand with the intention of living and working there for 12 months.

After finishing university, we wanted to travel around the world but could not afford estimated costs of £1000/month. Teaching English would give us the opportunity to enjoy in a similar lifestyle without the expense.

We agreed that our aim was to have fun while working somewhere beautiful…not to get rich.

Countries like Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan offer good wages for English teachers by Western standards but we wanted the beaches and islands of Thailand.

We trawled Ajarn.com (a great site for anyone considering teaching in Thailand) and used their region guide to decide on a few areas. Again, we wanted somewhere fun that we could invite friends from home to visit, even if wages weren’t great. We looked at:

• Phetchaburi (small town an hour south of Bangkok on the coast)
• Phuket (island on the West coast, popular tourist destination)
• Surat Thani (industrial town on the East cost people pass through on their way too Koh Samui)
• Koh Samui (smaller island on the East coast, popular tourist destination)

Veteran teachers and ex-pats living in Thailand told us that jobs were plentiful in Surat Thani but so was the congestion. Phetchaburi looked like a nice coastal town, near to Bangkok if we wanted adventure but apparently the beaches are a bit crap and it is very quiet.

We initiall agreed that Koh Samui and Phuket would be too expensive but we rethought our motives and think we can manage on either. Koh Samui is a little less touristy than Phuket and so that is where we are heading to!

Siam Dir showed a lot of schools around Bo Phut on the North of the island. The hotels in Bo Phut seemed to be quite upmarket, so we are staying down the road in Chaweng. We had initially planned to book the hotel for 13 nights, but if we arrive and things looked bleak, Michelle said she didn’t want to be hanging around when we could be looking for jobs elsewhere.

As a result, we are booked into the First Residence Hotel in Chaweng (£16/night with breakfast!) for 7 nights. If things aren’t looking good, we’ll book a flight to Phuket and start job hunting there.

We are 10 days out and things are really starting to look ship-shape. If you have any stories about teaching abroad (and therefore advice for us) I would really love to hear from you. Why not just say hello in the comments section at the end of this post anyway?

Who Am I?

Who is John Peden?

My name is John Peden and in less than 3 weeks I will be moving to Thailand with my girlfriend Michelle (Shell) to teach English. At least, that is the plan for now. Shell has got her heart set on teaching young kids. Personally, since the idea was first thrown aroudn that we should move abroad and teach, I’ve not been too fussed about what I do. I’m currently working for myself as a Wordpress developer (web designer) and am hoping to continue to do so during our time away.

A Thai teacher earns around £400/month which I can make quite comfortably in about a week.

What is the purpose of this blog?

Having had friends move away for long periods of time, its always nice to hear from them and to stay up to date with their movements. Although it might be a little excessive, I’m hoping to do the same with JohnCPeden.com. I’ll use Feedburner to allow them to subscribe to updates via email and everytime I produce something new, they will be informed.

Is it just for friends and family?

Not really, they will certainly be my target audience and I might recruit Shell at some point in the future to help me keep people informed. There is certainly a lot of noise being made about liberating yourself from the office and working from a beach. Our trip will certainly help to establish if this is something that every 20-something graduate can do.