My Travels Around The World Truly Begin – One-Way to Thailand

From my courageous stint in medical research in Belfast, I could finally afford to fly the coup once more. This was the trip where my life as a serial traveler actually began.

Dreams of Travel; But How?

I came out of the hospital but didn’t want to face the real world and I wanted to travel but I still wasn’t exactly rolling in cash with just $2000 in my current account and $5000 in savings from working through uni, an awesome mother etc. I went online and started googling – “how can I travel with very little money”, “travelling on a genuine shoestring”, “working and travelling” yadda yadda yadda. Aside from being inundated with pleas to pay 10 grand for the privilege of volunteering for 2 weeks in some far-flung country I wasn’t making much progress. Then I stumbled across CELTA.

So, teaching English in Thailand?

I’ll explain the mechanics, logistics, tips and tricks etc behind a CELTA diploma in my ‘Travel Tips’ subsection but I’ll give a brief run down here for the sake of my story. It’s basically a diploma from Cambridge Uni (the REAL Cambridge Uni believe it or not) that you study intense, I mean intensely intense, for one month and combined with your degree you can then teach pretty much anywhere in the world

CELTA’s can be taught anywhere so I signed up for my course which was being run in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I had never even heard of Chiang Mai by this point and bought a one-way ticket to Thailand. Wham, bam, thank you mam and I was outta there. From looking on the net aimlessly on how to travel and earn to applying for my course probably spanned across about 24 hours but I figured the more I think about how crazy it is the more likely I am to pull out, so i booked the course and my flight and all my money was gone again but spent very wisely.

* IMPORTANT MESSAGE/DISCLAIMER: I feel as if I should add that at this point my plan was honestly to fly to Thailand to study my CELTA, take a one year contract teaching English in China, then fly back to the UK to pursue my career in finance aided by my newfound ability in Chinese. So, 3 and a half years, 40 countries, 3 broken cameras, 2 lost iPods and and a host of amazing experiences later I’m still on the move with no plans to stop. What I mean to say is, if you are planning to do something similar a CELTA abroad be prepared to never be able to return to the same life, same mentality and same banality ever again.

(EDIT 2020: My life is VERY different from when I wrote this! Check out my story here to see how!

Remember, never travel without travel insurance! And never overpay for travel insurance!

I use HeyMondo. You get INSTANT quotes. Super cheap, they actually pay out, AND they cover almost everywhere, where most insurance companies don't (even places like Central African Republic etc!). You can sign-up here. PS You even get 5% off if you use MY LINK! You can even sign up if you're already overseas and traveling, pretty cool.

Also, if you want to start a blog...I CAN HELP YOU!

Also, if you want to start a blog, and start to change your life, I'd love to help you! Email me on johnny@onestep4ward.com. In the meantime, check out my super easy blog post on how to start a travel blog in under 30 minutes, here! And if you just want to get cracking, use BlueHost at a discount, through me.

Also, (if you're like me, and awful with tech-stuff) email me and my team can get a blog up and running for you, designed and everything, for $300 - email johnny@onestep4ward.com to get started.

Do you work remotely? Are you a digital nomad/blogger etc? You need to be insured too.

I use SafetyWing for my digital nomad insurance. It covers me while I live overseas. It's just $10 a week, and it's amazing! No upfront fees, you just pay week by week, and you can sign up just for a week if you want, then switch it off and on whenever. You can read my review here, and you can sign-up here!