I started my normal day with a must Thai session on Wednesday, but instead of an evening session I was packing my bag! I left my apartment around 7pm and walked to the airport.

The nice ladies at the Hong Kong Express check-in desk upgraded me to the exit row because there was more leg room. Maybe because I’m tall by Asian standards? But funnily enough, when I boarded all the people in the exit isles were white people. In our defense we we’re taller than the majority of the passengers… Also, on a side note the security at the airport in Chiang Mai is so relaxed by US standards. Security take 5 minutes and isn’t nearly as serious. It’s pretty nice!

Then after a hour and a half delay I got on the plane and zoinked out until we arrived in Hong Kong. In my half sleepy state I wandered around and took advantage of the free WiFi. When I finally realized I should get to my gate so I can focus on getting some sleep, there were no lines for the immigration, transfer or whatever procedure I had to go through.

Then, since the Hong Kong airport is huge, I took a shuttle bus about 10 minutes to my proper terminal for my morning flight. Then, in the terminal, I found some bean bag chair at a kid’s entertainment section. Unfortunately, there was an old man sleeping on two and a girl sleeping hogging four. I assessed her sleeping and decided I’d risk stealing one from her. I snatched it and ran off to my own corner and set up shop for the night.

After about 4 hours of sleep I got up and repacked for my flight. After a quick bathroom break I was on my way to Korea. I slept most of the way there as well. Then off the plane I had to go through the line for foreign passports which consisted of me and a couple hundred Chinese people. The line was pretty slow, but I got through and Maria Ha was waiting on the other side for me! For those who don’t know, Maria and I went to high school at MLS together.

After that we went to a board game place where we planned a bunch of different board games and I enjoyed a Korean sports drink, similar to Gatorade. We played a game where you had to get a certain number and type of rubber fruits out of a bowl using chopsticks. Needless to say, I was completely outmatched versus two Koreans. It was super fun nonetheless, and after that we met Maria’s mom for dinner. While waiting for Maria’s mom to pick us up I saw my first snow of the winter season! The restaurant was one of those short tabled, sit down cross legged, restaurants. Food was great. However, my inept chopstick ability did resurface.

Then we went to some supermarkets and I enjoyed perusing the local selections. The fresh seaweed was a first for me. Maria and I happened to find all the free smples in the store which included green tea ice cream, Pho Vietnamese soup, and even rice wine. We bought a couple bottles of the rice wine and the banana flavored rice wine is pictured above.

Second Day in Korea

The next day was a special day because we we’re planning to visit my old high school roommate Kisun, the one who started my love of hodduck. We had a two hour subway journey to his military base. In Korea there is a compulsory two years of military service for all males. So he was just six months in on his military service after choosing to serve after his junior year of college.

So we stood outside the check in post and ended up catching up for talking for 2 hours! I technically wasn’t supposed to be inside the gates, but we just kept in low key and we even snuck somewhere to take a couple pictures together. Apparently, according to Kisun, I am the first foreignor to visit the base since it opened 10 years ago. When we first talked to the check in post they had to call in to ask what the procedure was. It went up the line since no one knew what to do because it had never happened before. Maria could go in, but I couldn’t. So they went to the store on base while I just milled around. But we just spent most of our time right inside the gate just reminiscing about good times back in high school. Man, it was so good to see him! Even though I didn’t get to go in I am glad that we got o catch up. Maria and I were his visitors outside of his parents so I think it made him really happy to see us!

Maria and I thought about hitting the DMZ after we talked with Kisun, but there are apparently a ton of regulations now with rising tensions and we would need to plan better. I did get to see acrossed the river into North Korea though!

Next on my adventures are Korean church, possible DMZ visit, hiking some of the local mountains, and of course more hodduck!

At last, the post about my side hustling and income schemes that I have been promising!

Now to preface this, I do not have a work visa. No one will hire me to give me a work visa. Wages here are low. A Google search shows that the average Thai person makes roughly a little over $20 a day. Of course there are those you more much more and those who make much less. I don’t have a lot of hours to work.

Once I fell into a routine with my Muay Thai training I started to see several hours in my day that would get chalked up to whatever leisure I fancied. Normally my time is spent reading, watching Netflix, or purusing the local mall (for the AC on hot days). It can be stressful to watch the money slowly wither away with no income coming in. So I started thinking there has to be some opportunities for me to work online and earn a decent wage. Realistically, $10 a day would cover my bases expenses of food and my apartment here. So my goal was to earn $20 a day if I could. I was hoping for a system to work for 2 hours a day earning $10 an hour. That was the hope.

First Attempt

My first thoughts were to look online for opportunities. There is a whole culture of people who live here, since the cost of living is low, and then make their money working online. They are called “digital nomads.” They typically already have a business set up and then travel around once they know their model is sustainable. There are a lot of different methods to this, but none of them are really that appealing to me. It also seemed like a lot of work to get the ball rolling maybe only to see the fruits of my labor in the last month of my three month stint here. Really I just wasn’t in a place where I wanted to commit to anything because my focus was obviously on Muay Thai.

I looked for relance opportunities for short time gigs and even survey and data entry type positions. As an American, my problem was I have been to spoiled by our great economy. In all these freelance gigs there is always an Indian or an African willing to work for less than you. So it’s a race to the bottom and you end up making maybe $3 an hour if that on some of these platforms.

Second Attempt

The best and most popular option I found through my Google research was teach English online. There are so many promises of $15 an hour and guaranteed flexible hours. They may be true, but a lot of companies, understandly, wanted a 6 month commitment minimum. That doesn’t really work well with my situation so I looked for more casual English learners. What I found was opportunities as English conversation partners mostly for Chinese people.

Essentially, I downloaded an app on my smart phone and after a demo audio conversation I got approved to be a conversation partner. Then I switched my “status” to online and waited for interested students to give me a call. In my first week using the app I was able to earn $70. But it was a lot of work! The system works where you set your own rate, usually based on your teaching experience and seniority on the platform. Being brand new my rate worked out to around $5 an hour which isn’t terrible.

The problem I found with the platform was that in order to make that $70 I had to be available any opportunity I got. The students call when they want. So I can be online for 3 hours and maybe only get one 20 minute call. So it became extremely frustrating as it wasn’t a consistent stream. After a while on the platform I decide to raise rate. I raised to a level where I would make roughly $7 an hour. Even doing this killed the amount of calls I was able to receive.

Overall, I just decided it wasn’t worth the effort. It was so inconsistent and hard to plan ahead for. I ended up putting in about 20 hours on the platform and had some great conversations with Chinese professors, Chinese students, and even little kids. Some people already had a great level of speaking while others were not near as good. The bad students could be pretty frustrating and there aren’t many resources on the app to help teach. It wasn’t worth it to me to develop a curriculum to help these people since I really don’t have the patience. I still have the option of teaching, but for the time being I’m over the experience.

Third Attempt

This attempt isn’t a conventional approach, but it made for some fun and interesting memories! The story starts when I found a Craigslist ad looking for an “interesting foreign person” for a guest appearance on a YouTube video. I sent in my info and a couple of pictures and forgot about it. I cast my line out on a lot of opportunities like this so I didn’t expect to here back. A couple of weeks later, however, I got an email back and they decided to go with me! Then after we organized a shooting time and location I got down to business!

The premise of the video is that the star of the YouTube channel sets up her best friend on a blind date. I’m that blind date… So we went from the mall to a nice dinner date to ice cream. We even went to the market where I played some carnival game to win her a stuffed animal. Pretty cheesy stuff. Oh, I forgot to mention the girl I was on the date with didn’t speak English…

It has been a week since the video has been published and it already has over a half a million views. Even my trainer at the Muay Thai gym saw it. He got a picture with me to show his daughter who is a fan of the YouTube channel. You can watch the video below! I am now told that it has English subtitles available, but it’s pretty comical without them!

The job took around 3 hours and paid 1000 baht (about $30). Best of all I have this awesome YouTube video as a momento of my adventures and time here! Good news too, I the rating on the video we’re good so I’ve been asked back for s second date. We’ll see how many videos I ended up appearing in atthe end of this!

Fourth Attempt

This opportunity came to me by pure luck. One of the days training a lady came by the gym to scout out guys she thought would be good bartenders. The day after she did her scouting the gym manager stopped me on my way in and asked if I would be interested in a bartending gig. I was kind of surprised especially since I have absolutely no bartending experience. But I got in touch with her on Facebook and she asked me a couple of questions and that was it.

The event was a Thanksgiving party on Saturday and Sunday night for the local expat crowd. A lot of the people were English teachers for workers for NGOs and non profits. Since it was Thanksgiving the majority of the guests were Americans with their British and Australian friends sprinkled in. It was the largest group of white people I’ve seen in Asia actually!

I was a little nervous having never bartended before, but luckily the menu was simple. There were only two cocktails on the menu. I was there with another fighter from the gym. He would make the one cocktail and I would make the other. So really it was pretty simple! There were probably only about 60 people each night so it really was only busy when they all first showed up and attacked the bar.

The job actually became pretty fun once I got the hang of it. I found people love to talk to bartenders and be friends with them because they probably think we will make their drinks better or make them extra strong. I met a lot of really interesting people doing cool things in Thailand. Overall it was another great experience and another thing to pin up in my adventure journal.

That’s it for this post! On Saturday the church is having an adventure out with camping and special celebrations near a waterfall so I will likely do a write up about that! If anyone reading has any online gigs or knows of any opportunity for me, I’m all ears!