I spend thousands of hard earned dollars and quit some jobs to try teaching English in both 2024 and 2025 with a negative outcome.

The issue with the “perception” on social media behind TEFL/ESL: The TEFL/ESL industry is heavily steeped in marketing showcasing glamorous adventures and lifestyles. TEFL course providers sell people on the dream of quitting that “corporate” 9-5 job and teach kids for a reasonable amount of hours per day. YouTube vloggers make cherry picked videos while sipping a coffee about how amazing their lifestyle is teaching.

The interview charade with ESL schools: Upon interviewing with my school in Bangkok, my interviewer in retrospect did a major disservice to myself by really not showing me what the job was really like. Instead, he just talked with me casually for an hour or so and made some weird off handed comments about the student behaviors but that it would be fine. He reassured me this would be a great entry-level role with support… but looking back on it… you are thrown to the wolves in many aspects.

The person interviewing me (who had been with the company for over a decade) also didn’t really explain what the job itself was like.

Although bad interviews happen domestically, the reason it’s so problematic internationally is because you are essentially uprooting your entire life and spending thousands (in some cases more) to take a chance on living abroad.

Bangkok travel woes: When I landed in Bangkok… I was absolutely exhausted coming from the US. That was by far the furthest I had flown and my body was reeling from the shock of travel.

I asked the school director while at my layover in Tokyo if I could come in a day later due to how bad I was feeling. Because I was arriving a couple weeks later than originally anticipated, I only had a 1 day buffer between landing and then needing to be at the school. In retrospect this was partially my fault, but the school offered no grace and I was told “get some rest…see you Tuesday for training”.

Arriving in Bangkok: After arriving at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, I was dragging myself through customs and baggage claim before finding a cab to get to my hotel.

There were fleeting moments of excitement and awe being in Bangkok, but that didn’t last once i was seeing the “real” Bangkok first hand inside the cab.

Having long followed Bangkok112 on YouTube, Bangkok is NOTHING like the videos show with cherry picked content of Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza. It reminded me alot of Mexico in the surrounding areas outside of the tourist zones on the Caribbean side. A hot/humid, “exotic” location with rampant poverty and fairly rough living conditions. It was by no means like some row housing project in Philadelphia, but it was rough in its own way.

I finally arrived at my hotel (which of course looked way worse than the photos) and checked in. Reality then hit: I needed to not only adapt to the time zone difference, I had to find food, water, and figure how I was getting to my school in time the next day. I was also met with another surprise, no toilet paper and Thailand uses what is called “the bum gun” … so my hygiene was already off to a bad start.

The chaos of Bangkok and traveling to work: After getting the worst sleep of my life, the morning came and I threw my clothes on with the loose plan of using the Bolt app to fetch a taxi over to the school. I had done *some* research before flying and it sounded like most foreigners use Bolt to get around…seemed fairly straight forward. I stepped out of my hotel at 6AM thinking I had more than enough time to get to the school by 7AM for the training session. I wanna say my hotel was like 5-10 minutes away from the school according to internet maps.

Upon loading Bolt and stepping outside of my hotel (which was located in an alleyway of some sort) … a situation came up. No one was responding to my request for a ride. 10 minutes pass and I am totally panicking because I don’t know anyone who could help me figure this out. I stupidly begin walking out on the main street in hopes my phone maps would work in “walk mode” so I could navigate on foot to the school. (It didn’t work)

I then step into a side alley and realize my mistake… you have to request a motor bike instead of a taxi due to how narrow the alleyways are. So I called for a bike and shortly thereafter I was riding on the back of some guys bike maneuvering through rush hour traffic in Bangkok.

The school: I made it to the school … but wow was Bangkok a concrete zoo. I entered into the doors of the building where the school was and noticed some guys leaving wearing the color shirts of the school I was employed with. I called for one of them and asked if this was the right building…the guy looked at me with this sort of deadpan look and said “Yup…hah…good luck…” as if he was about to embark on a day of misery while also judging my own stupidity for coming.

I found the entrance to the school itself inside a massive business building and that’s where it all went down hill. I lasted a few days before collapsing both physically and mentally.

The first day was fairly OK and actually filled me with some decent optimism. It was the school director and foreign teacher manager “greeting us” (it was me and two others in the training) while also giving an overview of the coming week. I made friends with the other guy in my training and he tells me during lunch break how amazing Bangkok is and how you will want to stay. The part he left out (as i found out later) was he already held Thai residency, spoke fluent Thai, had a Thai girlfriend, had rich parents, and was only taking this job for extra college money between semesters…so naturally he was a bit biased.

Seeing the young kids in person and the way we were supposed to teach them was an insane crash to reality. It looked and felt like you had to humiliate yourself in front of these kids to keep them entertained. Granted is this something you might eventually get used to? Maybe. But I was definitely nor prepared for it.

The fatigue of getting around Bangkok: The day came and went and the annoyance of having to get a Bolt bike to travel most places was becoming very tiring. I would strangely dread having to get back to my hotel and hope I would get a decent driver. After a long day and spending more than 10 minutes in the Bangkok heat, you just want to rest and not deal with annoyances that pile up.

The land of smiles: I found the locals fairly xenophobic in general. You could tell they were focused on their own day to day issues and didn’t really care or want to get to know you as a foreigner. I lost my voice by the 4th or 5th day being there and I went to a coffee shop. The woman cashier inside looked at me like I came from another planet and there was awkward silence the entire time. At one point, I did not think I was going to be served due to her clear disdain she had on her face. People will say “oh you didnt give it time”… but how long does it really take before you start getting better treatment? In Mexico for example the reception I had was much better.

Mediocre conditions at the school: The school did very little to help you feel prepared for the class. The managers were horrible, and it was apparent that you were kinda thrown into the fire overall. Things just seemed very disjointed and chaotic.

Stress takes its toll: I firmly believe I wound up getting ill due to the stress of the entire situation. I was out of it for weeks and had to quit the job. I flew back home and ultimately hit the unemployment grind with not much going on except ruminating on what went wrong.

The aftermath and a mini social media rant: Social media influencers make teaching abroad and traveling in general this easy-going, fun affair to escape the 9-5 grind. My takeaway is be very cautious about jumping into this lifestyle because employers can be very predatory. Cultures from what I have seen can be very unwelcoming if you are not staying at 5-star resorts and possibly white skinned.

• Long work hours similar to the west
• Traveling is stressful
• Teaching young kids is exhausting and demands you to humiliate yourself to an extent
• The school itself can prove to be a mediocre employer
• You uproot your life and compromise yourself financially if it doesn’t work

The above hit my biggest issues with the whole experience. I tried sharing this sentiment on the /TEFL Reddit and was harassed for weeks on end by the mods and other users who were extremely angry. Why? No idea other than there are people making a profit from selling people on a pipe-dream in many ways.