4 Tips for Teaching Online & Traveling in Vietnam

If it’s always been your dream to travel the world, you’ve probably come up with a few different ways that you could make ends meet while you see new sights and meet interesting people. However, did you know that you can become an online teacher and get paid for it? More and more wandering spirits around the world are learning about the benefits of teaching English online from the road, and if you’re serious about turning your travel dreams into reality, you should find out everything you can about this liberating new trend.

3 Benefits of Teaching English in Vietnam

Even if you eventually plan to travel the world, Vietnam might be the perfect place to start. The weather in this tropical paradise stays warm and sunny throughout most of the year, and even if you aren’t well-to-do in your home country, you’ll be able to live like a king in Vietnam for next to nothing.

Plus, Vietnam has become more and more industrialized in recent years, and it’s now possible to access high-speed internet in many areas throughout this welcoming country.

Best of all, the crime rate in Vietnam is relatively low, and when you aren’t staying in big cities, you won’t need to worry much about locking your room at night.

4 Tips for Making Remote Teaching Work in Vietnam as a foreigner

4 tips before taking an online teaching work in Vietnam

Here are a few basic tips that will help ensure the success of your traveling and teaching plans:

• Try it out before you leave home: When you first arrive in Vietnam, you’ll be reeling from jet lag and culture shock, and the last thing you’ll want to add to the equation during this sensitive time is a new career. Get started with your English teaching ambitions before you even consider leaving home, and make sure that you have a good grasp of the basics of your new profession while you’re still in a familiar environment. If you get started early enough, it’s even possible to save up extra funds that you can then use to enjoy your first week or two in Vietnam work-free.
• Lock down your internet access: Nothing is more unfortunate than setting up an English tutoring lesson only to realize that you won’t be able to make it to your session. While internet availability in Vietnam is generally good, the type of Wi-Fi that you can access in hostels and cafes generally isn’t strong enough to handle a video chat connection. Instead, opt for hotels or apartments which usually have a stronger and more reliable signal – you can even ask them to test the speed for you before booking.
• Schedule around your adventure plans: Always remember that your main reason for teaching English remotely is to fund your plans to explore Vietnam. If your teaching schedule starts to interfere with your ability to travel, you might need to restructure your daily itinerary. Many successful remote English teachers dedicate three or four days out of the week to lessons, and then they spend the rest of the weeks checking out Vietnam’s ancient temples, bustling cities, and glorious beaches.
• Learn how to budget: Teaching English remotely isn’t a formula for getting rich, but it can be just the fuel you need to make exploring Vietnam safe and comfortable. If you budget effectively, you’ll be able to spend as much time in this tropical Southeast Asian paradise as you want, but if you don’t act carefully, you could find yourself in a sticky situation sooner than you might think. Before you leave home or even buy your plane tickets, you should get a general idea of the bare minimum you’ll need to spend per month to keep yourself happy and comfortable during your travels, and you should write out a list of necessities and their general costs. Then, after your first week in Vietnam, you should revise your monthly budget while taking into account the actual costs that you incurred so far. Being able to budget effectively will keep you from the brink of financial disaster, and it will also give you a better idea of how much you need to work per week to purchase necessities.

Vietnam is an incredible place to explore and teaching online is a great way to see more of it – we recommend this guide if you want to learn more about teaching online.  If you’re interested in physically teaching English in Vietnam you can learn more here.

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Quincy Smith is the founder of ESL Authority, a website that helps people understand their options when it comes to teaching abroad.  A former teacher himself, he has been traveling the world for the past 4 years.