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?