I read that Vietnam pays $20 an hour and you can pretty much work as few or as many hours as you like. And if you do private tutoring you can make even more. There's a guy on youtube called Alex Ninja teacher, he explains it pretty well.

Ah, you mean online classes?

yeah, working PT you work as many/few hours as you like. But it's like poker in that to make money you gotta work when there's money to be made, and enough hours to live.

Another thing is visas: I have friends working part time here and there that take home more than me, but they're working illegally strictly speaking. Practically no one will give you a Z visa (the ONLY legal one to work under) unless you're full time. But as far as my hours go, I can't complain.

I clock in at 1pm, can prepare for classes (takes 5 minutes) and then can go eat, wander around the mall, literally whatever as long as I am back there for my classes from 2-5, then I have another 2 hour break (I could probably go home if I wanted to, no one checks) then two more classes from 7-9. For whatever idiotic reasons, as long as you clock in before 1 and out after 9 and teach your classes, they don't care.

No just regular teaching, language schools etc. They pay $20 an hour and I thought that was higher than China from my limited research I did.

And in VN you get to live in HCMC for under $1000 easily! From what I gather you can easily save 12k/yr and live a good life, yet only working 100 hours a month, not too bad if you ask me!

Gee that does sound nice-which is why I'm doing that now haha.

If you look at my cost breakdown you can easily live for under 1k if you're not in one of the super cities.

Do you need a college degree to teach English there? I've read conflicting things on that in the past. Or if you do get a job its going to be crappy with no college degree. I see u wrote your friends work illegally im guessing thats why. Do they get paid and treated crappy compared to you?

I've always thought teaching English could be something i get into when the bots take over online poker in a however many years. I obv was to lazy to finish college though.

Do you have to where a suit to work everyday?

you absolutely need a four year degree to legally get a visa. anyone telling you differently is scamming. Now, you absolutely can get a job without one. But it won't be legal and your contract won't be legally enforceable. Also, think about the type of places that hire unqualified workers.
Some people are qualified and all, they just don't have a Z visa. This has advantages. I have a year long contract, they can work part time as much or little as they want. But for me, if you're actually trying to build a life here it's best to stay above board. If you're ever starting a business you don't wanna be explaining weird gaps in your visa/employment history.

what you wear depends in the job. I work with adults, were supposed to wear non jeans pants and a button down shut. because its a bit cold in this ahopping mall, i usually wear a sports jacket.

Yeah id just do the illegal work thing if i was going to do it. I was just curious its one of those things ive thought about doing if/when online poker becomes unbeatable one day to stay in Asia and make some cash. Not something I'll likely ever partake in but when you said u got some buddies working illegally i just wanted to hear if thats what they were doing.

I'm not concerned about getting a LOL real job anytime soon if ever anyways, but if i were teaching English would be passable for me i THINK. OBV i have no degree though so by time the day comes id be interested it'll be even tougher to get a job then nowadays. I've looked at other things to do on the internet for work but just seems like such a waste of time compared to the money i can make just grinding the tables.

Also i never mentioned i love badminton. I played tennis for my highschool and got down on some badminton when i could. Havent played in years though.

That's cool, but what I meant to point out is that you can live in the best/biggest city in VN instead of a 3rd tier city in China. You also don't need a bachelor's degree to get work.

Subbed for the nice pictures. Might read some of theses long posts, probably not.

I heard visa situation have gone bad in VN

That sounds cool for some. I don't equate biggest with best for me though. I chose to move from Shenzhen to a tier 3 city.

Where you at right now? I actually will read your thread. Just need to finish Info Shove thread first.

I hosted a poker game on Sunday. The stakes were laughably low, but a good time was had by all. Got some invaluable information though.

-the bully mentioned before has, shall we say, not had his option renewed by the bar(s) I've talked about. Apparently the owner(s) have realized he's a liability. He also had a big argument with the longtime foreign bartender/manager of one of them, who wouldn't speak to him for months. It seems the guy is well on his way to making as many enemies as possible.

-the well-known owner of a foreign business is known scumbag. Besides constantly cheating on his wife with his friends wives (which he makes no attempt to hide), he's also a low-level scammer-doing things like selling cards to buy x amount of product (as long as you pay up front) and then not honoring it.

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gf's out of town for a few days, not sure what I'll do with that time.

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this kitten bought by the owner of a Korean restaurant is out of control and apparently hates shoelaces.

as for visa wise,
go to hk for visa runs,
Or get a 1-2 years visa from a 3rd party !

my friend from Uk recently got a 10year visa,
but he have to leave china every 30days !

Realized I haven't shared any pictures of the city.

one of the main roads



Not at all shocking to see high schoolers in the bar.

cool little tower on top of a hill-quite the work out if you run there.


This place figures to be really big in a few years. It's a small village just south of the main road. Lots of the buildings are pretty old and interesting. Right now lots of cafes, bars, restaurants are opening inside. It's not nearly at capacity though. As long as they don't destroy the very things that made it interesting and charming in the first place it should be a cool location and relaxation/drinking center of town in a few years.



This is on a weekend, it's almost empty on weekdays.


you can see the new bricks from construction



for non-Chinese speakers, this says "long live Chairman Mao" (or more literally 10,000 years)

the big character underneath is "loyalty"

This is an old clan meeting hall. Same family name as my gf, so I joked it's her family's (a joke because like 90% of Han have the same 50 last names)




not gonna bother translating this.




this is like the country club for party members.


that white dudes gotta be french right?

microbrewery in the village


now out of the village. Same view day and night




now in the heart of downtown, nice park to the right



we have a lot of their tree covered roads that I love



favorite dessert


just driving around in one of the areas behind the main roads

The last few pictures seems like a nice neighbourhood, is that where you live? Also, I was expecting some cute local Chinese girls in those pictures

Nice, much better weather for outdoor hoops there. Theirs a court at the college by my condo here but its just to fkn hot to play. All the indoor hoops arent played by me. I'd guess the basketball scene is alot bigger in China as well.

Great thread so far, I will keep reading it and probably start posting when I feel I have something to add.

As far as payment in China goes, it probably varies by tier of city, but I live in a tier 2 and get paid 250RMB/hr for my cheapest class and 500RMB/hr for the top end. If you work for a training center, you will probably be paid much less and have to deal with more BS. The best way to do things is find students who want 1 on 1 or small group lessons and cut out the middle-man. As Tyler alluded to, the company you work for will take a huge cut of the money.

The basketball scene in China is pretty well established. I'm in a wechat group of more than 100 foreigners in my city who all play, they like to play outside when the weather is nice but I only like indoor. During the summer it can be pretty humid where I am, so the floors will often be slippery inside, so that makes being able to play a little more hit or miss for me. If you're willing to play outside, you'll be able to find a game almost anywhere around the city I'm in for like 9 months out of the year.

whats your visa situation?

Student visa, so I have about 20 hours of Chinese classes per week and teach about 10-12. I could probably get a work visa from one of the 留学 companies that I do some teaching and editing for, but I'm going to be leaving after this semester and I didn't really feel like taking on additional work if I didn't have to.

When I first arrived in China it was with the intention of learning Chinese while working full time, but I found that 40 hours in the training center was too consuming and I barely learned anything. I'm finishing my 5th semester at a university and will take HSK6 (and hopefully pass, shouldn't be too much of a problem based on the practice tests I've done) before leaving.

Currently procrastinating studying for my midterms tomorrow and Friday.

Why didn't you applied for the CSC scholarships or Confucius one？if not too personal I'm curious how much you pay for that language school and accommodation

if there were any universities in this city that did those Chinese language programs I might do that.

Never heard of anyone making 500hr on any sort of regular basis.

LB I know thetuition at Shenzhen University like like 1000USD a semester for the chinese language program.

Yeah it is a little more than $1000 per semester. I've inquired about scholarships literally every semester and each time they tell me they aren't available. I don't mind paying the tuition because it is relatively cheap for the amount of classes I take and it is relatively easy for me to make money here.

The key to making the most money is either finding small groups of people who will have classes together or finding students that will be going abroad who come from rich families. I live in the business district of my city, so it isn't too hard to find those kinds of gigs as long as you don't work for a company, although the liuxue company I mentioned previously paid me 400/hr last summer to teach about 15 hours per week which was pretty awesome. One of my friends does small groups of kindergarten students and he said he gets 500-600/hr, all paid one semester in advance, so I know it isn't just because of my guanxi.

Well that's pretty awesome. Even in Shenzhen I almost never heard of anyone making 500 an hour.

Yeah, you can definitely make more money. However, as far as I know, there's no strictly legal way to do that, is there (apart from setting up your own company)? While the chances of getting caught are quite low, as I'm planning on staying here long term I kinda wanna stay aboveboard in regards to visas and such.

I wish I could do that FT study thing though-it seems like a much better route for off books teaching than "visiting family" or "business" visas. if you're asked to explain what you're doing in china it's a lot better to say "ive been a student for two years, here's my school records" than "I've been visiting family for two years."

I'm the only one who think those school fee for 1 semester are super expensive?

#NotFromUSA