The cost of flying home
How much does that trip home to see the family set you back?
If you teach in Thailand and still have family living back in Europe or America that you are on speaking terms with, then the cost of the annual trip home (or however often you make it) is something that always needs to be factored into your budget.
PJ's journey
How difficult is it to adjust to life back in the old country?
How easy or difficult is it to adapt back to a life in your native country after spending seven or eight years teaching in Thailand? Will jobs be easy to come by? Are your old friends still around, and if so, how will they react when the wanderer returns? How does it feel to suddenly find yourself thrown into a world of credit crunches, binge drinking, escalating crime rates and a world far removed from the one you left behind?
Notes from a small island
reflections on a trip back to the UK
England really does seem so expensive to me now. OK you expect to pay more for goods than you would in Thailand but this time I really noticed it. I paid almost twelve pounds for four standard-size single-cone ice creams in the village of Henley-in-Arden. It’s three pounds plus for a decent sandwich in Pret-A-Manger (almost five pounds if you have a bottled fruit smoothie to go with it) but for a sheer jaw-dropping, wallet emptying experience, how about five pounds for a large cappuccino and a muffin in Starbucks?
