HOW TO SURVIVE LIVING ABROAD
AN EXPATRIATE GUIDE TO NOT GETTING ROBBED, SCAMMED, JAILED, OR KILLED
English Teacher X
Copyright © 2012 by English Teacher X
Published at Smashwords
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: LIFE AND HOW TO LIVE IT
CHAPTER TWO: PASSPORTS, VISAS, AND DOCUMENTS
CHAPTER THREE: THE ACTUAL TRAVEL PART
CHAPTER FOUR: EVERYDAY LIFE ABROAD
CHAPTER SIX: DRUGS, ALCOHOL, AND WHORES
CHAPTER SEVEN: FUCKING, DATING, AND ROMANCE
CHAPTER TEN: PHILOSOPHY AND ADVICE
DISCLAIMER
This book contains several links to resources. Although every effort was made to ensure all information is up to date, English Teacher X is not a legal expert, so should you find yourself fucked, consult an attorney.
English Teacher X does not receive any compensation whatsoever from any of the resources in this book. There are no affiliate, sponsored, or commissioned links. Resources in this book are recommendations from English Teacher X; they are not advertisements.
INTRODUCTION: LIFE AND HOW TO LIVE IT
Thirty or 40 years ago, and way on back to Bubonic Plague times, young people who wanted to get out into the world generally just went to the nearest large city, where Raw Unadulterated Life awaited them.
You know what was nice about that?
At least they could get home easily, when life smashed them in the fucking face, stole their money, and then stomped their head against the curb.
Now, thanks to the internet, we see young people who have no experience outside whatever bland prosperous suburb they grew up in suddenly deciding to jet off to Mongolia or Peru or Nigeria to have an Authentic Cultural Experience.
Naturally, inevitably, most of the time, it ends in tears.
Ah, but telling you not to do it is like telling little kids not to stick beans up their noses; it just makes you want to do it more.
In the last few years, especially, globalization has begotten in the previously prosperous Western countries quite a few indebted, demoralized, disenfranchised youth, who feel the best way to deal with their problems, like their immigrant forefathers in times of old, is to go abroad in search of the Promised Land.
As teaching English was one of the primary ways people go abroad and get jacked up, probably second only in job dissatisfaction to that of sex slaves and migrant fruit-pickers, I wrote a book attempting to lay bare the realities of that profession.
ENGLISH TEACHER X GUIDE TO TEACHING ABROAD
This has been received so well, that I feel I need to turn my jaundiced eye upon the whole idea of moving abroad.
WHO AM I?
I am now in my early 40s. I have not lived in America since 1998, when I lived in New York for approximately one year.
Before that, I had not lived in America since 1993.
I have spent most of the last 20 years abroad. I have lived in seven different cities in five different countries, excluding America.
In that time I have supported myself solely by teaching English to foreign students. I also visited dozens of other countries in that period.
It’s been pretty jolly and all. But here are some things I HAVEN’T done:
I have never owned a car, a home, or the newest model of mobile phone.
I never earned more than $28,000 in one year, until I arrived in my current destination in the Middle East – I now make about $50,000 per year; albeit that is tax free, with housing, insurance, and airfare included.
I have never worked more than 40 hours in one week. Well. . . maybe once or twice. But usually not more than 30.
I have never lived in a house, except when visiting my mother. I usually lived in rented rooms and small studio apartments. In fact, several times, I lived in accommodations where I had to share the bathroom, and occasionally lacked hot water.
Accordingly, I haven’t paid any bills other than rent each month. (And in the last few years, for internet and mobile phone usage.)
I haven’t paid any money into a pension fund or the American Social Security Fund since my year of working in New York in 1997 – 1998.
Until my most recent position, I never had a health insurance policy beyond what was available by way of free care to citizens and guest workers abroad.
I have had many foreign girlfriends, but have never been married, or lived with a woman for more than a couple of months.
What enables me to write a guide to survival abroad?
Nothing more than surviving abroad for most of my adult life. I make no claims to be a specialist in any of the issues addressed in this book, and I bear no responsibility for any decisions you make or actions you take based on this book.
So go abroad and get butt-fucked, and don’t blame me for it.
IT MUST BE TRUE – IT’S ON THE INTERNET
Ah, back in the ‘90s, it was all about the backpacking.
Going abroad for six months or a year to travel around, maybe study a bit, and make yourself a well-rounded person by getting fucked up with other backpackers on cheap third-world beaches.
Hell, I did it plenty.
But now it seems there are more and more people who want to go abroad permanently.
Look on the internet now for information about moving abroad, and you will see scores of books and websites devoted to the wonders and joys of evacuating your Western homeland.
(This is mainly true regarding Britain and America, but I don’t exempt Australians and Canadians.)
Abroad – or so these sites would have you believe – men are still men and women are still women! Health care is free and work is plentiful! The masses have not been enslaved by the evil corporations and their advertising and their reality TV shows, and people still LIVE rather than just rotting away in cubicles.
Now look more closely at those internet websites – and see that they are mainly trying to sell you stuff.
They’re trying to sell you membership to internet dating agencies, condominiums and real estate abroad, plane tickets, hotel reservations, visas. . .
And the books.
My god, they’re endless now, with the independent publishing options available.
How to quit the rat race. How to work abroad. How to work for four hours a week and support yourself abroad. How to pick up girls abroad. How to pick up girls while you work abroad. How to work four hours a week picking up girls. Ad infinitum.
Now obviously, this is something that’s as old as commerce.
“Give me a dollar and I’ll tell you a foolproof way to make a dollar.”
I think my next book will be “HOW TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT HOW TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT LIVING ABROAD AND PICKING UP GIRLS.”
I’m not going to deal with any of these books or the claims in them, individually, and I’m sure some of them have a lot of helpful information of one type or the other.
But please – approach any claims with caution and a logical and realistic eye. A lot of people are telling you what you want to hear, and making a profit doing it.
This book will deal with the dangers and difficulties and problematic aspects of life abroad, as I have experienced them over the last 16 years.
During that period, I spent only one year living in America, in New York City, which seemed more like a foreign country than some of the foreign countries I lived in.
Primarily, this book is directed at people who are thinking of moving abroad, in whatever kind of position, or people who have already decided to move abroad and need a little kick in the ass.
The advice herein will be rather general and not directed specifically at any destinations or professions.
I suspect none of the people interested in this sort of stuff had much in the way of input from a strong father figure, and are now struggling to fill that gap.
So this book will deal with all the stuff your absentee father didn’t tell you about life abroad: money, documents, security, work, sex, all of that.
You know – how to survive.
I was constantly shocked by how many people rolled up into Russia to teach English, without even enough money to get a plane ticket home.
I mean, in some cases it was pure bravado from slightly loony men seeking adventures and ready to go out and grab life by the nuts and squeeze hard, counter-clockwise.
But in many cases, there were meek and helpless people who simply had no sense of financial responsibility whatsoever. Whether they thought life would somehow be free and easier abroad, or whether they’d been so irresponsible all their lives, I really don’t know.
It sucks to be broke in your own country, absolutely.
You know what sucks worse?
Being broke in another country.
“FUCK YOU MONEY”
So how much money do you need before you can set out?
I first heard the term “Fuck You Money” in an old movie from 1986 starring Burt Reynolds, the title of which is HEAT. (Not to be confused with the 1994 Robert De Niro/Al Pacino classic.)
Burt Reynolds’ character is a washed-up bodyguard in Las Vegas who dreams of winning $100,000, so he can run away to Italy. His plan was to spend $20,000 a year for five years.
After he makes a miraculous run at blackjack and actually wins the $100,000, he is discussing the matter with a client.
The friend asks, “What then?”
Burt Reynolds considers the matter and realizes that it’s not enough money; that the last couple of years, he’d be constantly worrying as the money runs out.
He decides he needs $1,000,000, which would amount to $20,000 per year for the supposed rest of his life.
He goes to the table to try to win it, and of course loses it all.
How much is “Fuck You Money” these days?
That’s a good question.
I rolled up in Thailand in the ‘90s, when I was 26, and had about $1,000 to my name; after working for a year there, I had about the same amount, and I decided I needed more of a cushion to better enable me to enjoy my feckless lifestyle.
So I went to Korea in 1996, to save some money.
I decided I needed $10,000.
That was enough money, at that time, to last me a year in places I liked, like Thailand or Prague. Living extra cheaply, maybe even two years. I stayed in Korea about nine months, until I had $9,980 – you can legally take out a maximum of $10,000 from Korea without having to declare it – and then I got on the next plane out with no regrets.
The U.S. inflation calculator tells me that $10,000 in 1996 is about $14,000 in 2011; but in fact, the cost of living in "the third world" has gone up at least three or four times what it was in 1996, so it's not such a straightforward calculation. ($100,000 in 1986 dollars is more like $200,000 in 2011 dollars.)
You can survive on $1,000 a month in quite a few places – hell, I think you could even do it in more than a few cheaper American cities. But the days when $1,000 could be taken abroad and give you a rock-star lifestyle are LONG gone.
Nowadays, $10,000 would definitely get you safely out of one country and established in the next, but beyond that, you could blow through all of that easily in a few months, especially if you had to buy plane tickets and pay an apartment deposit or agency fee.
I would say the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM you should have available is about $5,000.
Obviously, if you have a family to take care of, calculating "enough money" becomes very difficult. As you get older, of course, there are the various nebulous worries of retirement and health care costs.
If you’re an older person trying to give it all up to go abroad, you’ve got plenty of other stuff to worry about, and we’ll deal with some of that in other chapters.
But again, I’m probably talking to the pampered young video-game-and-porno generation, who can’t even get laid, much less start a family, so enough of that.
Now another issue – cash on hand, or money in the bank?
CASH OR CREDIT?
As I said, I never ceased to be amazed at the number of people who went abroad without any way to support themselves in an emergency.
Jesus Christ, as somebody who started traveling in the ‘90s with a pocket full of cash and travelers checks, at a time when there was no internet, and bank machines were as rarely seen as UFOs. . .
Take advantage of the conveniences of our modern age, you fucking moron.
Open a bank account in your home country with a debit card that works internationally – most of them do. Obviously, do a bit of comparison shopping about the fees – it shouldn’t be hard to find one with low or no fees.
Believe me, in this day and age – as somebody who used to take annual trips home for Christmas with $4,000 in my sock – you DO NOT want to go through customs with a huge amount of cash on you.
You just don’t, believe me. Sure, by law – there’s nothing illegal about transporting undeclared money as long as the amount is less than $10,000.
But a world of hassle and lengthy questioning awaits you nonetheless.
Unless your time is worth nothing, and you have free access to a barrage of high-powered attorneys, just open a fucking bank account.
And you can use the debit card online to buy plane tickets and stuff, too, most likely. (As you probably bought this book with a credit card, perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree here.)
Fortunately, bank machines are as common as fat people these days, as the encompassing tentacles of the global banking cartels complete their strangleholds on the world economy.
Yeah – that’s a bad thing.
But the fact that I can stick my card in a slot practically anywhere, from Asia to Europe to South America, and get money in an emergency is a good thing.
Hell, you know – get a credit card! If you don’t have savings, a credit card could be the fallback you need.
Use them wisely, but get one.
I had practically no credit history whatsoever, but got a secured card from Capital One, with a $500 limit, with no problem five or six years ago; a few purchases later I had a limit of $1,500, and soon I got offered one by my own bank, and now I have a combined credit limit of nearly $7,500 between me and oblivion.
Being an international traveler these days is not like jumping freights back in the hobo days; you have certain easy advantages and certain requirements. You need a passport, and you need a debit or credit card. End of discussion.
At the very least, it might be useful in the odd case of a customs officer inquiring about how you’re going to fund your travels.
Having tons of credit cards and running up a lot of credit card debt is actually a fairly common way to juggle your finances, but I’ll stop short of advising massive credit card fraud to pay for your adventures. (Although, you know – it’s probably easier than you think.)
PENSIONS
Now, that’s free money!
Of course, you’ll need to work 20 years or so in some shitty job before you can get one, but the pensioned travelers I’ve known over the years are some of the happiest.
Working 20 years for the police, the Armed Forces, or certain government jobs can often get you a pension that will allow you to “live large” in the cheaper countries of the world.
Back in the old days, you could have worked as an auto worker or a Teamster or whatever and gotten a good pension – it’s pretty doubtful in these 401(k) days, however.
Now of course, a 20-year-old is unlikely to choose to be, say, a firefighter for 20 years, just to get a pension that will allow him to go live in Thailand when he’s 40. He’d pretty much have had decided already that he wanted to be a firefighter.
(A fine choice of profession by the way! So you say you don’t want to waste away in some soul-crushing office job – did you ever consider that there are plenty of jobs where you DON’T HAVE to waste away in a cubicle? Be a cop or a nurse or a teacher or a farmer or. . . excuse me. I digress.)
Another option is to get a disability pension. Some “crazy money.” Have yourself diagnosed with a bad back or manic depression or something; there are plenty of lawyers (and doctors) who specialize in getting these things. I was told by one guy that at one point in Oregon, having a visible tattoo on your face was enough to qualify you for disability money.
The bad news is that it’s unlikely to be more than $500 - $1,000 a month, assuming you’ve worked for five to 10 years already, and might be contingent on periodic reviews with doctors or a board or whatever.
But currently, in the USA anyway, there’s nothing preventing you from having your money direct deposited and then setting out to wherever.
With the aging population and all, all those old fuckers with pensions are moving abroad in liver-spotted, smelly droves, in search of better weather and cheaper living. (And of course, their mere presence is driving up prices all over the world. Hi ho!) There should be a surge in opportunities abroad for people able to provide home care for the aged. Heads up, y’all!
OTHER SOURCES OF FUNDAGE
Less reliably obtained then pensions, I’ve met plenty of people traveling on money they got from insurance settlements after some horrendous accident or whatever.
Sometimes the accident wasn’t even that horrendous – I met one guy who happened to be in a bank when an old woman crashed into the front of it in her car, and he got a generous payout despite not being scratched. (Alas, I suspect insurance agencies are considerably more tight-fisted these days; that was back in the ‘90s when everything was rainbows and blowjobs.)
Hell, even getting a chipped water glass at Applebee’s or a loose coffee lid at McDonald’s is the potential source of an enormous lawsuit.
I was reliably informed by an insurance adjuster – if you want to file a lawsuit against some business due to some injury you sustained on their premises – you can almost always get $10,000 quickly because in most cases, it’s easier for a business to pay $10,000 then to get its lawyers and go to court, even if they have a solid defense.
DEBT
Then there’s the other side of that coin – perhaps you think that going abroad is the best way to avoid your massive student loans, massive credit card debts, or alimony payments.
Well, it’s not. They can find you now.
I knew a guy working in Russia after a bad divorce, having quit a higher-paying job back home in order to deny his wife such a good percentage of his income, and he found himself sued in absentia over it and the papers delivered right to his address in Russia – where, like all foreigners, his residence was registered with central authorities.
And just because your bills can’t find you, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. There used to be stories, some of which were perhaps even true, that if you avoided your creditors for six to 10 years (depending on the jurisdiction) they could no longer pursue you for the debt.
But apparently private credit agencies can go after you literally to your deathbed and beyond, so don’t try it, unless you’re willing to be completely off the grid for the rest of your life, never work legally, and pay cash for everything. Rock on there, outlaw!
For more information on how long you can be on the lam without the creditors coming after you, read this MSN article on statutes of limitations.1
While they won’t be able to garnish your wages if you work abroad, they’ll certainly go after whatever possessions you have back home. One acquaintance of mine who was teaching English in Prague and running from her student loans had to return to America suddenly when she was told her car was going to be repossessed.
Naturally, if you have nothing, you can lose nothing. Whether you want to call that freedom, or complete and total penury, depends on your perspective.
Basically, if you want to run from your debts, there are plenty of ways to do it back home.
Just declare bankruptcy. I know of a middle-aged guy in America who declared bankruptcy every nine years or something, then got back to running up huge debts, living off women he knew, all the while running a shady interior-decorating business until it was time to do it again.
Another possibility regarding huge debts, and I was told this by a guy working for a debt collection agency, is to not pay until legal action is about to begin against you, and then make some nominal payment, a few dollars, which can force your creditors to begin the process of starting legal action against you all over again, which can take quite a few months.
(I was told that this even works for student loans; the government is bound by even more rules than private collectors. Do your own further research, of course – I am no legal expert.)
If you are an American with student loans from the government, everything you ever wanted to know and much more can be found at the U.S. Department of Education website at StudentAid.ed.gov. The section on “Repay Your Loans” helpfully tells you what the government is willing to do to you should you feel the urge to skip town and default. Punishments include getting sued by the federal government (now, doesn’t that sound like a party?) and having the IRS withhold your tax returns (should you ever decide to get a real job).2
For more information about your legal rights and dealing with student loan debt, this website might help: StudentLoanBorrowerAssistance.org.
There are a lot of aspects to all of this, and as the good folks at the enormous Wall Street banking and finance firms teach us – there are plenty of ways to avoid paying debts using perfectly legal methods.
Good citizen that I am, I know of this only from hearing about it from the various riffraff fugitive English teachers I’ve worked with.
So take my advice – don’t run unless you’re really ready to live like a refugee and fugitive all your life. (I realize that sounds cool when you’re 23 – but will be considerably less so when you’re 43.)
You’ll have to research the specific laws of your jurisdiction yourself though; I’m not your Personal Assistant.
DEALING WITH YOUR MONEY ABROAD
So when you actually get abroad, most of the time it’s a fairly straightforward matter to get a bank account and put your money in it.
That depends on the country, of course. There may be some local regulations about changing money that might affect you. For example, in some countries, there is a legal limit on how much of the local currency you can change to US dollars or euros.
(Many English teachers get around this by buying on the black market, but that’s got its own risks – you could end up with counterfeit money, or getting butt-fucked in an alley.)
But mostly, international banking is as free and clear as shoplifted 7-Up.
Now of course – most of the jobs you can get on the scrub end of the scale are going to pay so little that there will be very little need to bank your money, because you’ll be just scraping by every month.
In addition, there are some occasionally worrying tax aspects, both in your home country and in whatever foreign hell-hole you’ve dropped anchor in, related to having a foreign bank account, but it’s unlikely to affect you TOO much, given whatever tiny pittance of a salary you end up with.
If you’re actually making a good salary, do some research to make sure about your tax position. Americans have a foreign earned-income exclusion of around $95,000 – that means that as long as you live abroad most of the year and work for a foreign employer, you don’t have to pay taxes unless you make over $95,100 (according to this IRS article on Foreign Earned Income Exclusion).3
And believe me – it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll make over that amount. As an English teacher, you’re lucky to make $20,000 a year.
Becoming an official “expat” can mean you lose your voting rights, by the way, if that bothers you. Check out this Telegraph article.4 And visit your country’s official government website, too.
EXCHANGE RATES
Now – the exchange rates of the world, like the value of stocks and shares, have gone all over the place in recent years. But there’s been such inflation in the cost of living in third world countries, that the exchange rate is just as likely to hammer the dollar or euro as to help it.
(There was a lovely black market in currency exchange all around the world, especially in Eastern Europe, during the ‘90s, in which charming men in leather jackets with really bloodshot eyes would offer to buy your dollars, and perhaps drug you and fuck you up the ass. Now it’s the big banks that do all the fucking.)
You want to make money in currency speculation? Well, rock on with that. If you have a good head for figures, maybe you can manage it, but it sure as hell isn’t easy money.
Sudden currency devaluations have chased me around the globe – I left Thailand and Korea in the ‘90s shortly before a massive currency collapse in those countries would have reduced my foreign-currency savings, in dollar terms, by about 1/3.
I stayed in Russia for nine years – some years I made out well buying dollars, other years I suffered. My paycheck originally came in dollars, but suddenly, when the price of oil went up in 2003, my salary was getting me fewer and fewer rubles. Then they started paying us in a fixed ruble rate – just in time for the massive global economic collapse of 2008, which led to the dollar value of my rubles reduced by 1/3. (I solved that problem by just spending all my rubles on vodka and beer and nightclubs in Russia before I left.)
So you know – be sensible. Keep currency in various forms. Dollars or euros are the most widely accepted currencies – er, unless of course, the European Union breaks up next year – but also try to keep a decent stash of the local currency because the odds of the dollar or euro devaluing are no better or worse than the chance of sudden drops in the value of the ruble or the yen or whatever.
Much is made, in certain circles, of the necessity of protecting your money from the financial apocalypse that’s supposedly around the corner. (Apparently the massive worldwide financial panic of 2008 was only the opening salvo.) I’ve known guys that carried around gold coins.
I’m not going to advise against it, but see what I said about customs. Gold has generally been a good investment (although, at the time of this writing, it had FALLEN in value about 15 percent over the course of a week).
In the event of a sudden severe currency crisis, which would probably lead to food shortages and riots, are you going to go down to the market and offer that armed man selling potatoes your gold coin?
(You might as well just offer to suck his dick – he’s got a lot more reason to let you live in that case – he won’t be able to get a very good blowjob off a corpse.)
Some have suggested they might need it to bribe their way out of jail in a foreign country; I’m trying to imagine a scenario in which they wouldn’t just take the gold coin away from you AND stick you in jail for the rest of your life.
Again, maybe you just need to work on your dick-sucking skills.
PERSONAL CHALLENGES RELATED TO MONEY:
Personal Challenge #1:
1) Apply for a bunch of credit cards that have no monthly or annual fee, until you get some. Get a card with “rewards points” and use it for usual monthly purchases until you get some rewards points.
2) Then buy some stuff with the credit cards, and see if you can resell it on eBay for a profit. Hey, you’re an entrepreneur!
Personal Challenge #2:
1) Examine currency exchange rates in different countries, read the financial pages, and choose one that changes rapidly.
2) See if you can make some small profit in currency speculation.
3) After you fail, maybe you can use your credit card rewards points to buy food that month.
CHAPTER TWO: PASSPORTS, VISAS, AND DOCUMENTS
VISA HELL
So, obviously, you get the passport. That part’s easy.
Then, if you want to live abroad for more than a few months, you have to deal with visas and residence permits.
They are likely to become the bane of your very existence.
A lot of countries allow people to roll up and buy (or obtain for free) an “entry” visa at the airport. Usually that one lasts for two weeks to a month, maybe three months.
Some people live abroad for years just hopping back and forth from country to country when their entry visas expire.
Then there’s usually another kind of “tourist” or “visitor” visa, which maybe lasts for one month to three months that you can apply for; maybe you can do that on the internet, or maybe you’ll need to go to an embassy.
Then there’s usually something like a “business” or “non-resident work” visa, which is valid for longer periods. Getting one of these will probably require some company in the country to provide sponsoring documents for you, and on your part, any number of applications, notarized official documents, police background checks, etc. If you don’t have a legitimate employer, there are usually agencies that can help you get such visas, for a not-insubstantial fee.
The problems, variations, and possibilities are myriad.
Thankfully, the internet has made such research a lot easier than it used to be, but you certainly can’t believe everything you read on the internet.
THE RULES
The rules change constantly. Clear information might not be available in English. Even your “employers” might not know the rules. You might read completely incorrect or outdated information on the internet. Somebody at the fucking embassy might not know the actual laws. The people at passport control might not know the laws.
Bizarrely, the rules for obtaining a visa can actually vary from country to country. Trying to get a Russian visa at the Russian consulate in Prague will be a completely different experience from getting a Russian visa at the Russian consulate in Frankfurt, for example.
Even more bizarrely, the rules and procedures can vary WITHIN a country – getting a visa from the Russian consulate in Houston, Texas has slightly different rules from getting a visa from the Russian consulate in Washington, DC.
Travisa.com is a useful, although not-cheap option for helping you deal with visas, and their website has a lot of (hopefully) up-to-date information about visa requirements to and from pretty much every country.
The three most difficult countries to get visas to, for Americans, Canadians, Brits, and Australians, are (as of this writing) Russia, China, and India. You will need to spend a lot of time filling out forms and probably hundreds of dollars.
And with all of these documents – one word wrong, one lacking stamp, one photo with the wrong color background, one number transposed – AND YOU’RE FUCKED.
THE GOOD OLD FASHIONED “VISA RUN”
It used to be fairly easy to live in a country for a long time on tourist visas – just leaving the country and re-entering after a few months. This was often known as “visa running.”
But these days, computers at passport control are likely to spot that and may lead to you being denied entry. The EU countries provide an easy three-month entry visa for Americans at the time of this writing, but I’ve heard of several people being denied entrance after staying for three months, going somewhere else for a couple of weeks or so, and returning.
You’re in the computers, man. Don’t have any doubt about that.
By the time you know you have a problem with your visa, it’s too late – you’re already at passport control being denied entrance. This can range from a minor hassle to an impossible expense.
CASE STUDY OF GETTING A VISA
As an example of the intense bureaucratic horseshit that goes with your trip abroad, last summer I decided to get a two-month “business” visa to Russia to go visit my girlfriend. This was a bit easier than getting a “tourist” visa, which required an itinerary of hotels, or a “home stay” visa, which took longer to get and required her to submit documents about where I’d be staying.
First I needed a letter of invitation from a Russian company. An acquaintance in Moscow recommended a company which sold me an invitation for about $50.
I downloaded the application forms and filled them out, answering inane questions about my mother’s father’s name and whether I had any experience with chemical or biological weapons. (Has anyone in history ever ticked “yes” to that?)
I shipped them off to the agency, as I was not anywhere near a Russian consulate, and the consulates do not accept independent applications by mail. (Applications by mail must be done through an agent, who of course charges a fee.)
I was called after a week and told that the application had to be printed on both sides of a single sheet of paper for the embassy that I wanted to apply at, so I did that and the application process started again; now I had less time so I had to pay an extra fee to get the visa in three to five days.
I got the visa – with the price of the invitation, the exorbitant cost of the visa, overnight mailing fees, and the commission of the agency – total price was about $500.
Which is approximately the average monthly salary in the provinces of Russia, by the way.
Also, it used to be that customs didn’t bother people on business visas much about exactly what kind of “business” they were conducting, but, in fact, that time I got a lengthy inquisition about the nature of my work, since there were numerous stamps indicating that I had previously worked as a teacher in Russia.
My business invitation had me coming as a “consultant,” a handy catch-all job title that means very little, so I spun a crafty yarn about coming to help language schools and companies design new programs of English, and was admitted for 90 days.
The old “visa run” – back in the ‘90s in Thailand, pretty much everybody just worked on three-month tourist visas and traveled to Malaysia to get a new one – is still possible, even in places like Russia. I know an Irish guy who goes back and forth nearly every three months and has been doing that for years. But the modern age makes it fraught with potentials for problems.
The good news is that the people in customs probably won’t butt-fuck you. The bad news is they can rarely be quickly and easily bribed anymore.
Of course, the vagaries of world events and politics affect all this gravely; keep your eyes on the news.
Sadly, the increased globalization of the last decade has led to so much terrorism, civil unrest, inflation, and disparity of wealth that we may start seeing open borders start to close again in the next decade.
Or is that sad? I guess we’ll see.
LEGAL WORK VISAS
Generally speaking, to get a legal work visa in a country, your employers will need to prove that there are not enough locals, able or willing, to do your job.
And of course, we both know that there’s not much chance of that. You’re useless in all ways.
The only field in which it is pretty much always easy to find a legal job is English teaching, but in that field, the contracts with employers are themselves often not particularly legal.
English teaching comes with its own hazards, since the laws about qualifications or background checks can change suddenly, especially when some English teacher gets arrested for raping a schoolgirl or whatever.
Some examples:
SCUBA instructors and bar workers will probably have little chance of ever getting a legal visa – au pairs are usually covered a little better by special regulations.
To get a work visa or legal residence permit or the equivalent, you’ll probably need an “apostille” copy of your diploma and professional certificates, verified transcripts and references, HIV and bloods tests, and who knows what else.
Basically, you’ll probably have to throw an enormous amount of time and money at the problem.
And working without a legal work visa is generally really stupid; you may as well just pull your pants down and bend over, because you're just asking to get butt-fucked by your employers.
OTHER KINDS OF VISAS
A lot of countries have “investment” visas, where you can get a lengthy visa or perhaps even legal residence if you start a business, invest enough money, or buy some property.
And if frogs had wings, they wouldn’t bust their asses hopping around.
Student visas are easy to get and usually allow you a fair bit of latitude in terms of residing and even working in a country – but of course, you’ll have to actually take some lessons in something that will allow you to get a visa. (Usually studying the local language is your best bet, but there might be options if you become a full-time student of tango or kung fu or playing the Balinese pan flute or whatever.)
TYPICAL PROBLEMS
I’ve had several problems with visas because my employers gave me incorrect or incomplete information – I actually ended up leaving my job in Russia because of an incident that led to me coming back to Russia with a new passport but an old visa. The school had assured me that the old visa could be written into the new passport, but the people at passport control instead gave me a little taste of deportation.
I had to go to Germany and spend more than a thousand dollars getting it sorted out, and of course my employers didn’t want to pay any of that.
So that’s another thing to watch very carefully – when your passport expires, what happens to your visas and residence permits and whatever else?
One rule to remember – and I think most countries have this rule – your passport must be valid for at least six months from the time of entry or the time of application of visa.
One guy I know was denied entrance to Russia because of this, but he worked for Schlumberger and of course they picked up all his expenses in dealing with it. Lucky bastard!
Make sure that the guy at passport control actually SEES and stamps your correct visa – I once had the experience of going to Thailand with a three-month visa, but the guy at passport control didn’t see it and gave me a stamp for a one-month entrance visa.
This required an afternoon at the passport office to sort it out. Something fairly similar happened here in the Middle East recently – an old visa left in the passport was stamped, rather than the new visa.
(Some countries have websites where you can check your visa status online; it’s a convenient way to find out what exactly the immigration folks think about you. See if the country of all your hopes and dreams has such a website. If not, oh well.)
So regarding visas – be patient, be methodical, be thorough, and be prepared to throw a lot of money at the problem.
PASSPORT AND DOCUMENT SECURITY
Now here’s something to keep in mind. As will be discussed in the chapter on Security, you as a traveler or a foreigner living abroad are a target, and one of the things people will especially want to take from you is your passport.
So please, keep that fucking thing secure.
I lived through this in Thailand. ALL my I.D. was stolen. I had nothing left but a photocopy of my passport.
The embassy in Thailand sees a lot of people with “lost” passports and are not sympathetic at all – they know that a lot of people actually just SELL their passports and report them stolen.
They told me the (admittedly rather-dim) photocopy of my passport was not good enough, and gave me a new passport that was valid only for a year, on the provision that I produce some more verifiable I.D. to get it extended.
I had to get an old college I.D. mailed from America by my mom.
Keeping your passport secure is priority one. Priority two is keeping high-quality scanned copies of your passport and other documents available. Spend a few hours scanning your passport, driver’s license, Social Security card, and credit card (you got one, of course you did!) and any other documents relevant to your situation – diplomas, applications, insurance papers, all of it!
Now, security concerns don’t end here. If you just stick all this information on a USB stick, this would obviously be a gold-mine of identity theft, should you lose it, or if the drunk transvestite whore you brought home steals it while looking for your phone.
So you’ll have to encrypt it or password-protect it.
You can lock WinRAR files with a password – right click to begin compressing something as a WinRAR or WinZip archive, and then click “advanced” and “set password.”
Remember the golden rules of passwords – use a combination of letters and numbers, and a combination of upper and lower-case letters.
Make a password-protected WinRAR file, and keep a copy on your computer, a copy on a USB stick, and email yourself a copy.
There, you’re as secure as any lame moron far from home could possibly be. In regards to replacing your documents, anyway.
There are more advanced encrypting programs available on the internet – TrueCrypt is a nice free one but the problem will be that, if, say, your whole computer gets stolen along with your passport, you would need to use a computer that has the same encrypting program on it to open the encrypted files, and one might not be available. Got that?
WinRAR is an omnipresent program, even on cruddy computers at internet cafés, and can by quickly downloaded and installed; its level of security is probably more than adequate for your purposes, since of course if somebody finds your USB stick, they’re probably just going to erase everything on it and use it to store downloaded episodes of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER or whatever.
OFF THE GRID
Now, if you have some bizarre “off the grid” plan going on – living cash only, apart from the world financial system, outside of the reach of Big Brother or Facebook or the NSA GPS system or whatever – why don’t you go out in your home country and live in the woods and hunt squirrels and eat wild dandelions or something?
Because basically, when you enter another country with a passport, you’re not off the grid anymore. All those developing countries where you used to be able to fall easily off the map now pretty much have more modern computer systems in the Immigration offices than your home country does.
Some people just overstay their visas in whatever country – occasionally, the fine that you’d have to pay for overstaying your visa is less than it would cost you to deal with another legal visa and transit, etc.
(Obviously, you should know that BEFORE you try it.)
So yeah, sure, you could run out to an island in the Philippines or the jungles of Brazil and get “back to nature.” Nobody will know where you are, and nobody will care much.
Once your visa runs out, it won’t matter – except to the locals who find your bleached bones and the tattered remains of your passport.
SECOND PASSPORT/EMIGRATION/PERMANENT RESIDENCE ABROAD
None of these are impossible to get, but the processes of getting them are inevitably, unbelievably complicated, lengthy, and expensive.
Basically it’s like any other problem on this earth – if you’re willing to spend enough time and money and effort on it, you’ll probably eventually get it.
And then you’ll open up ANOTHER complicated can of worms regarding taxes, mandatory military service, your legal rights, and so on and so on.
Having parents or grandparents from whatever country will probably help you get residence there, but again, don’t expect it to be all wine and roses and blowjobs.
Even marriage is no longer a particularly easy way to get residence abroad; there are laws about length of residence, criminal record, means of support, blah blah blah.
Eesh, the whole topic gives me a headache. On to the next thing.
PERSONAL CHALLENGES RELATED TO VISAS:
Personal Challenge #1:
1) Research all the requirements and conditions of taking permanent residence in the country of your dreams.
2) Download all the forms, print them, and put them in front of you, along with a list of all the necessary documents on your end.
3) When you stop crying, invite your buddies over to play computer games and have a few beers and count your blessings.
Personal Challenge #2:
1) If it’s possible, go sit around in the visa office of your own, or another country’s embassy or consulate.
2) Listen to all the hysterical arguing about visas going on in the angry crowds of immigrants and expatriates.
3) Once again, consider your life choices.
CHAPTER THREE: THE ACTUAL TRAVEL PART
So first you’ve got to get there – after you’ve sorted out the visa thing, one way or another, for the short-term or the long-term, you buy your tickets.
TICKETS
I have usually found Expedia.com to be the most reliable and quickest way to get tickets. What you see is what you get – the tickets are always available and the price you see after the first search is the price you pay. Kayak.com and CheapTickets.com often give me links to tickets that aren’t available anymore, I’ve found. But you can check them, as well as SkyScanner.com.
Try clicking the little sponsored ads that you see on Kayak.com and the other sites; most of them are nonsense but great deals have been found that way.
One trick is to go directly to the airlines’ websites, and you might find a better deal, although that’s usually not the case. Sometimes there are flight times available that you might not see otherwise.
It’s usually, but not always, cheaper to fly into capital cities. Then you can look for cheap local airlines to get to other cities. Or, hell, take the bus or something.
The cheapest flights are usually available in the middle of the week, and usually leave in the mornings, but be careful about the times of arrival. If you save $50 by arriving at 3:00 am, but then have to spend $50 on a taxi ride because the buses aren’t running yet, it might not be worth it. And getting a flight that’s $100 cheaper might have you sitting in the airport waiting for a connection for 12 hours or whatever.
PACKING
Treat yourself to some new clothes in the style/brands you like before you leave; generally the best clothes are available for the best prices back in your home country. If you’re a big person, you might have trouble finding your sizes in Asia. My feet aren’t particularly large – 10.5 American – and I often couldn’t find my size in Thailand.
Other than that, take as much or as little stuff as you want.
But please – take a laptop/notebook/tablet computer.
I’ve met several people in the last five or six years who though that they were going to put all that screen-staring behind them; they inevitably regretted it. What, do you think you’re going to be running around the streets screaming and fucking and drinking 18 hours a day and sleeping soundly the other six?
Fill your computer full of ebooks, games, and movies and enjoy your free time, rather than staring at the scabby wall of your guest house.
GETTING OUT
Modern air transportation might not be as painful as getting butt-fucked, but it’s nearly as uncomfortable, invasive, and humiliating.
People talk about the events of September 11th being a conspiracy to rob America of its rights and freedoms – I think it was a conspiracy by the McDonald’s and Duty-Free shops to force people to spend more time at airports.
A quick check of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol website at CBP.gov reveals that it’s basically illegal to take anything at all on board a plane other than your clothes.
In practice, however, you can probably manage to get some other stuff on board.
Basically speaking, avoid taking any liquid or gel through security, other than in extremely small containers, and don’t take anything with an edge on it – nail scissors, small knives, and razor blades can all be confiscated. (Not a significant expense, I know, but it will take more time and make the whole procedure more annoying for everyone involved.)
Dress comfortably, unremarkably – dress to blend in. Don’t wear shorts or muscle shirts on the plane, is my considered advice – not only will it attract attention you don’t want from customs and passport control, but you’ll probably be freezing from the air-con in the airport and on the plane.
In fact, you’ll need to carry a sweater, a hoodie, or a light jacket in your carry-on bag. It will be useful as a pillow, also, during the inevitable long layovers that are part and parcel of modern air travel.
Obviously, iPhones and iPods are pretty much designed for wasting time in airports, with ebook readers, games, videos, etc., so make sure you bring your charger and an adaptor.
There are plenty of stories in recent years of people being stuck at airports for three or more days, due to bad weather or whatever; bring plenty of stuff to keep yourself entertained, like books, and survival and hygiene stuff.
CARRY-ON CHECK LIST
1) light jacket, sweater, or hoodie.
2) a book (that you can’t finish in a couple of hours).
3) iPod/iPhone/personal computer with ebooks, games, and videos, plus charger/spare batteries.
4) toothbrush, SMALL tube of toothpaste, SMALL bottle of hand-sanitizer or liquid soap.
5) antibacterial wipes.
6) small LED keychain flashlight in case the place gets blown up and you have to find your way out of the rubble.
7) you can take an empty bottle, plastic or metal, through security, and fill it at the water fountains; otherwise, in America and Europe, you’ll have to spend $4 or $5 on bottled water in the airport shops.
STUFF YOU CAN’T TAKE
If you’re going to try to take a Swiss Army knife or a multi-tool, it will have to be in checked baggage. Of course, you could just buy one at your destination, although they might cost a bit more.