So, you’re planning on having an experience or starting a career as an ESL Teacher while being a part-time Solo Traveler rather than just making money or embarking on obnoxious ex-pat events? So let me try to advise you the best I can, I lived in China for 18 months and I covered pretty much half of China using my days off, and holidays and asking for leaves wisely.
First of all, you must choose the type of school that best fits your traveling purposes. If possible you must make it somehow clear during the interview that being able to travel is of extreme importance for you more than anything else, this way everyone knows what to expect from each other. Some schools will lose interest in you because they prefer the basic ex-pat that mingles in the community and that’s fine. Others like this kind of personality.
There’s a basic choice that must always be done when choosing a school: a training center or a public school? (or even universities)
I’ll try not to generalize too much, but it’s a bit hard to do when you already know the reality of ESL teaching, but usually, more interesting souls tend to be more interested in public schools rather than the money factories that are the training centers. But! (and this is a very big But!) you won’t have much room for negotiation in a public school. It’s true that by default you’ll have more holidays (paid), free weekends, etc, whereas, at the Training Centers the holiday matter is totally arbitrary.
So why am I still insisting on Training Centers? Well, days off are usually during the week (do you really want to travel during the weekend?) and the working time is usually in the afternoon meaning that you’ll easily have 2 days and a half free to go somewhere, whereas, in a public school you’ll have to start your working day early Monday.
I’ll show you some examples of trips I managed to do with just 2 days off.
Zhenjiang:
I was living in a minor city (minor with 1 million inhabitants) called Taixing in Jiangsu province, not an amazingly beautiful place, but definitely, an interesting place to be if you’re adventurous and open-minded. There was no train station there, only buses, and still, there were so many traveling possibilities, my first small trip was just to a neighboring town called Zhenjiang, not the most amazing city you’ll see in China but I just wanted to go somewhere and that’s where I decided to go. If you go there, go to Jiaoshan Mountain, you must go by boat and it’s a pleasant half-day trip. around that area, you’re within walking distance from other nice places, so in case you wind up in Zhenjiang, it’s ok to spend a day there, not much more to say. it’s was a 1-hour bus ride from Taixing, so this was as easy as it gets.
On my second day in Zhenjiang, I visited Nanshan Scenic Area. It’s a nice hilly area covered by beautiful greenery, is very calm and you can get to very remote places inside the park, there’s not much to tell about it, but it’s definitely worth a visit if you’re around, and that was it. The next morning I would go back to Taixing and the following week, somewhere more famous was awaiting: Suzhou.
Suzhou:
The next weekend the procedure would be very similar – Monday morning I would go to the bus station (buses to Suzhou run on a very regular basis) and I would arrive at Suzhou before lunch, meaning I had a full traveling day ahead of me.
I stayed in a Youth Hostel very close to the City Center. Accommodation is very cheap in China, even if you stay in a hotel (pay attention to those that don’t have a license to host foreigners). But if you choose a Hostel and sleep in a shared dormitory, it’s one of the cheapest countries in the world in this regard.
One Long Solo 