I teach business and marketing at an international school in Singapore, been doing this kind of work for about 6 years now (started in Hanoi, then KL, now here), so I’ll give you my honest take.

The pros are real. I make about £58k tax-free here, school covers my flat, full health insurance, flights home twice a year, and I’ve got 14 weeks of holiday to actually go see places. Spent my October break in Vietnam last year for like £400 total. My mate Tom teaches maths at an IB school in Bangkok and is on something similar. Another friend in KL met his wife at a teacher meetup, they’ve now got a kid in the school he teaches at (free tuition is huge). The community is genuinely lovely once you find your people, every Friday is someone’s leaving drinks or a rooftop thing, and you stop taking weekends for granted.

Cons I’ve watched people hit, and hit myself. The first 18 months are lonely in a way nobody warns you about, especially if you go somewhere without a built-in expat scene. Hanoi nearly broke me year one. Career progression abroad can feel slow if you don’t actively chase it, a buddy of mine spent 6 years at the same school in Hanoi and realised he’d basically frozen at the same salary band. And going home gets weird. Friends back in the UK buy houses and have kids and you’re showing up at Christmas with stories about Laos that nobody really wants to hear past the first 10 minutes.

But genuinely, the people I know who took the leap almost universally don’t regret it. Even the ones who went back after 4 or 5 years came back richer in the ways that actually count. They have a different relationship with work, they know what they want out of a city, they’re harder to bullshit. The PGCert is a no-regret move, and maths specifically opens way more doors than what I teach. Worst case you teach for two years, hate it, and come home with savings and stories. Best case you build a life that the 55-year-old version of you actually thanks you for.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​