Not, I repeat NOT, an April Fool's joke

When I finished my TEFL course in October I took some time to do a little traveling. The timing was perfect to hike the Annapurna Circuit but I also wanted to use the time to do some serious thinking. I was getting ready to live in a foreign country for the first time. I wanted to make sure I picked the right one.

I have said all along that I would prefer to work in Cambodia. However, Cambodia is smaller and poorer than Vietnam. Cambodia is about half the size of Vietnam with about one-sixth of the population. (Cambodia is about the size of Washington state. Vietnam would fit neatly inside California.)

There aren't as many opportunities in Cambodia, and the jobs don't pay as well. My decision to live in Vietnam was made for mostly practical reasons. Don't get me wrong, I love Vietnam. I wouldn't choose to live there if I didn't like it. I have spent by far more time here than in any other country except the US.

The decision to live here was pretty easy when I discovered the ratio of teacher pay to cost of living is as good as anywhere in the world. You can live comfortably and even save money as a teacher there. If you land a job at a swanky international school you can live like a king here. In most countries, including Cambodia, you're lucky to scrape by on a teacher's pay.

I did, however, try to find a job in Phnom Penh. I applied at the big schools. Didn't even get a nibble. I did get a very nice rejection email from the woman who runs the best school in the city. She and I have exchanged emails a few times. She offered some good advice.

Last week she offered me a job! I thought that even if I was offered a job in Cambodia I would turn it down because I simply couldn't justify taking a pay cut of up to 50 percent. Imagine my surprise when she offered me more than I am making in Vietnam! I took a day to mull it over but I honestly couldn't think of one reason not to take it. Soon I will take the bus from Vietnam to Cambodia again, but this time it will be for good. I am going to work in Phnom Penh.

I was pretty sad when I had to start working again. In fairness to myself, anyone would be bummed out after living in a fantasy travel dream world for two years. I am genuinely excited about this, though.

It won't be hard to leave Vietnam. I was actually getting ready to start job hunting again because my job just wasn't working out very well. I talked to other teachers enough to know that I wasn't just experiencing the stress or growing pains of a rookie teacher. I was dealing with systematic dysfunction ingrained in the culture of my particular school.

I liken it to my days working in restaurants to pay my way through school. There are so many restaurants that if you don't like your current situation there's no reason to stay when you can easily find work somewhere else. The same goes for schools in Saigon. There are so many that there's no reason to stay at a place which encourages and rewards laziness and apathy in both teachers and students.

So the timing was perfect. Just when I had decided to start pounding the pavement and looking for a new job I was offered a job at the best school in the country where I most want to live.

I'm still working out the details for my departure. It looks as though I'll teach my last class on Monday, April 12, go in Tuesday morning to get paid, then hop on the bus to Phnom Penh.

I still have quite a few posts about Vietnam to publish. I have a couple about Tet, which ended more than a month ago. My bad...