Q1. Where did you move to and when?

I moved back to Wales in October 2014.

Q2. How long did you work in Thailand?

I taught in Thailand for five years. Well, to be accurate, I taught at a high school in Thailand for two years. Then I got itchy feet and moved to China for nine months. Then I returned to Thailand for another two years - at the same high school!

Q3. What was your main reason for moving?

That's not an easy question to answer. I think that perhaps I fell out of love with both teaching and also living in Asia. I started to miss my family as well. I thought I would have got over that feeling of homesickness after five years away, but I never did. I still loved Thailand and the Thai people though.

I knew though that moving back to a small village in Wales was going to be a huge gamble for someone who was now 27 years of age. The job situation back home wasn't great. But I didn't have a wife or partner here to worry about. I was still a free spirit. It just seemed like the right decision to return home and spend some quality time with family and friends - at least for a short while.

Q4. What are the advantages of working where you are now compared to Thailand?

Absolutely none whatsoever! Getting back into full-time customer service work has proved impossible. I could definitely find something full-time but it would mean relocating to a large city or town.

I'm living under my parents roof again (not an ideal situation for a man in his late twenties) and to keep the money coming in, I've taken on a couple of part-time jobs. I do four evenings a week behind the bar at a local pub and I'm doing some driving work for a car rental company during the day. The bar work is guaranteed income (albeit not a fantastic hourly rate) but the driving work is a few hours here and there (whenever the company needs me)

Q5. What do you miss about life in Thailand?

Having answered the above question as honestly as I could, I would have to say that I miss the independence :) Your own apartment, your own job with enough money coming in to pay your bills and to go out whenever you want.

And of course now we're in the depths of winter in the UK, I would give my right arm for some of that Bangkok sunshine. You'll never hear me complain about 30 degree humidity again. Try walking home from your bar shift at almost midnight with that icy wind coming up from the valleys. I'd forgotten what it was like to be so cold, you could almost break down and cry.

Q6. Would you advise a new teacher to seek work in Thailand or where you are now?

We all know that the teacher salaries are generally crap in Thailand, but you would be hard pushed to find a nicer country in Asia to live in. As I said in an earlier answer, I did nine months of teaching in China - and hated every minute! It just made me realise how much I loved Thailand and how much I was missing it.

In my second spell of teaching in Thailand, I noticed far fewer teachers sticking around for as long as I did. The teachers room became a revolving door. No sooner had you made friends with a teaching colleague, the end of term would come and they would be gone. It seemed to be the way teaching in Thailand was going. Not exactly what I would call backpackers (although the school had its fair share of those) but young guys only interested in doing a year of teaching at most.

So if you're thinking of coming to teach here for a short period, you couldn't choose a better country in my opinion.

Q7. Any plans to return to Thailand one day?

I'm missing the Thailand lifestyle. I really am. But something is telling me to give the UK just one more try.

Ideally I would love to have one of those jobs here where I could earn enough money to come to Thailand for three or four weeks every year. Now wouldn't that be fantastic?

Q8. Anything else you'd like to add?

Perhaps I should do another one of these 'great escapes' in six month's time. Hopefully by then I'll be making a better fist of life in the UK and Thailand will be a distant memory. Only joking! Thailand will never be just a distant memory.