David Carter

Enough poorly paid work but not much cream, I guess. I got by for fifteen months on a diet of Japanese privates and the odd Thai company managed by Japanese, which I got through recommendations.

In those days I just wanted to get by so I didn't have a gruelling schedule or anything, but most of my work was in Japanese apartments in lower Sukhumvit. Mainly primary kids after school, with okasan hovering in the background with cookies and elaborately served tea. I started off for two weeks in ECC but quit that drudgery as soon as the privates started trickling in.

I think about two fifty to three hundred baht an hour, although one Thai secondary boy's parents paid seven hundred for two hours five nights a week (because of the travelling distance: they were in Thonburi). To put this in context, my rent at the time was 2,500 baht a month (my share of a three bedroom house in Phaholyothin which we rented for 7,500 in total). My average earnings throughout 1990 were 25,000 baht a month. My best earnings were at a company called Luckytex in Samut Prakarn, netting me 750 baht an hour. But the ride up there – having to scrape the pollution off my face before greeting the employees – explains that seemingly high fee.

I wrote a collection of short stories about Bangkok, a novel about a London taxi driver who came to Thailand to find a wife through a marriage agency (The Amorous Cabby) and one about a Polish survivor of Majdanek death camp who marries a Thai and takes her to see where he'd been imprisoned as a child (Peculiar Flames: their complete incompatibility surfaces as a result).

Faber read all of my work, wrote back encouragingly at different stages then finally decided none of it was quite right for them; Hodder and Stoughton rang me up and asked for a rewrite of the cabby novel's first three chapters, then decided the same thing as Faber.
Many agents read my work but none finally took me on. I spent two years on these books, full time. At the end I was emotionally drained and decided enough was enough (at least for a good few years). The main thing is that I got some way beyond the slosh pile; that still makes me feel good. But if, these days, I hear anyone idly saying that they could write a novel my grin and silent mockery go into overdrive.

Not exactly; I found it quite stressful at times. And the students could be so hard to get going that everything depended on the teacher too much. Still, it was such a big step up from plodding the sois and, even back in 1993, the standard rate was five hundred baht an hour. I do have some good memories, though, especially of other teachers.

New International School of Thailand, in soi fifteen. There was no comparison; to go from teaching classes of twenty adults to classes of eight primary kids – I was in ESL – was bliss. I spent five reasonably happy years there and often came to the conclusion that teaching can be a very good way of passing professional time. And kids are the way to go; for me the idea of teaching adults – even the adult kids in Thailand - would now be a complete turn off.

In my fifth year at NIST I was getting more and more frustrated by the thought of never having tried writing. I'd thought about it for years and knew I had to do it full-time to make it a valid experiment and effort. Writing in my free time and not getting published wouldn't prove anything; there would always be the excuse that I could have done better if I'd dedicated myself more fully to it. I was thirty five and couldn't bear the thought of going in and out of a school for the rest of my life, even though I was getting paid pretty well to do that. So, there was only one thing for it: leave and put everything into my dream. It didn't work out but, when I look back, I know it's the reason why I'm where I am now and am thankful.

Yes, that's what my contract says. I started off as an ESL teacher here at a brand new school. Then, a year and a half into my two year contract, I was asked to switch jobs. I now teach the boy in question – an eleven year old in the ruling family here – after school. I'm also responsible for communicating between the palace and school and being the conduit through whom all information about the boy's education flows between the palace and the school. It sounds flash but, in reality, it's a rewarding job which just requires diplomacy, friendliness, tact and a desire to play zany uncle.

He's very likeable and completely normal. He's respectful of others and likes English much more than Arabic. And it's a Mini Cooper he drives, though I haven't seen him as he does that in the main family palace not the one where I see him. Seriously, he showed me where he drives it in the grounds, round an ornamental fountain, which we looked up on Google Earth and zoomed in on. His eighteen year old brother has a Mclaren…

A free one bedroom apartment, free utilities (that's 24 hour air-con if you want it and constant flowing water) and the standard school package of thirteen weeks holiday a year and the usual training opportunities. There's also a thirteenth month of pay for every year of service which the school keeps until you leave. My housing allowance is half a million baht a year but I don't use it all (my apartment only costs 350,000 baht). But the main benefit is the savings potential: in three years I've saved three million baht (then again I'm a stingy twat).

Yes. One of the great things about living outside Thailand is that you have an obvious destination for holidays. And flights from here only take six hours and cost about 18,000 baht. Bangkok feels so much better when you're not working there, too, as anywhere would. Bangkok means pure holiday for me now.

Retirement seems a bit presumptuous and scary to think about – I'm only forty two - but the condo means that I'm psychologically in Bangkok from now on wherever I am (I don't have a home in my native England, for example). That purchase has meant a lot to me; the mental roots have become actual ones.

A few years ago it was the nightlife but now, nothing. I'm there so often that I don't really get a chance to miss anything. Living away from life I used to have there daily somehow enhances everything when I get back; I think were I there full time now some malaise or other would descend. As it is, Thailand is just a great place to holiday nowadays and is also home. Whenever I'm back it just feels as if I was only just there, as if I've been away for a few weekends or something; that's a great feeling.

Not if you get into international schools it isn't. But, reading your interviews here, I was struck by how low some of the wages are. Some of the earnings mentioned were what I was getting ten years and more ago. I was amazed at that so, if those figures are genuine, I would say that it must be pretty hard for people there (on the dole in England you could get 17,000 baht a month, for example, over half what some are earning). I guess the absence of savings potential for these people must be offset by what they think of as a reasonable life or they wouldn't do it. The reason I contacted you in the first place was just to share my story. I prove that you can go from teaching privates in Bangkok to something beyond it – and then come back with enough cash to buy one of the condos like you used to teach in! Believe me, things have turned out very nicely for me sixteen years after I first lived in Thailand. And if things suddenly collapse, I won't worry: it's just good to know that things can turn round beautifully.