How many camels for your friend?

Camel riding sounds a lot more exciting before you are actually on the camel. Actually, almost all things camel related sound more exciting than they really are. Take for example camel milk, which quite literally tastes like licking a camel's hump, or the fact that camel's humps are more or less just fatty lumps on their backs, like creepy backwards breasts and not (contrary to popular belief) used to store water or much of anything for that matter. Plus if you've heard the pterodactyl like noises camels produce you'd realise they'd make horrible pets (if that was your thing).

So you can well imagine how disappointed Adele's family would have been had I agreed to facilitate an agreement between a Moroccan man for their only daughter .

'I don't think the novelty factor of having an entire herd of camels will convinced them', I argued as he generously upped the ante to 20 camels.

But the man was persistent, pressing for Adele's dad's phone number so he could call Vancouver and barter with him directly. If I'm perfectly honest I was slightly tempted to hand over the digits just to hear the conversation but decided aginst it figuring that the call would likely instigate a mild heart attack. In the end with Adele laughing nervously beside me, I managed to firmly decline the offer and guide us safely away. Camels are just not that lucrative a business for Canadians. Should he have been offering an exchange of adorable, fluffy baby penguins I may have reconsidered, but animals that chew cud and spit would hardly be appropriate in the suburbs of Vancouver.

Useless Skills

There comes a time for every traveller when you start priding yourself on a skill recently attained while on the road. Most of these skills don't apply to regular everyday life (like saving friends from being traded for camels) while some are completely and utterly useless (like my ability perfected while in SE Asia to text while on the back of a moving motorcycle). But I never really thought I would be proud of my ability to use a squat, let alone a hole-in-the-ground-outhouse-with-no-light-squat. But when you have little else to do in rural Africa there is ample time to perfect your useless skills. And so it began. Soon I become rather proud of my newly acquired gift to squat without bracing myself against a wall/door/goat/anything within reach, my uncanny ability to aim without peeing on my own feet and of course my ability to then stand unassissted afterwards without falling or stepping in to said hole. Ah yes, I was quite proud of myself, but alas as every childhood story with a good moral will tell you, don't get too cocky and try your new skill in the dark, because you may or may not accidentally poop beside, rather than in, said hole. And well, as you can imagine, that's embarrassing for everyone involved.

where to next? how about....Kenya?

I have spent years searching for a safe, ethical and affordable way to volunteer in Africa, seriously years, so when I accidentally stumbled upon the IVHQ advertisement claiming all three I held my breath waiting for the catch. The website looked pretty legit but what creepy single dude in his mothers basement couldn't pull that off, no I needed something a bit more concrete and surprisingly that came through facebook, where everything is totally legit. Right? Aside from containing more information than you ever wanted to know about any of your non-friends (read: facebook friends) it actually lends an air of authenticity and accountability to businesses by networking strangers. Example, I wanted to make sure that IVHQ was a real organization and not a front for human trafficking and/or general criminal shenaniganary, so I checked out their facebook page that thousands of people from all over the world had 'liked' and saw posts from past, current & future volunteers, which meant that either a) they were a real organization with a generally satisfied following or b) they had a lot of bandito friends willing to pose as teenage girls off on their first big adventure.

I chose to believe the former and booked within days of finding the site, just a little over a year in advance of the start date. Now, if you know me well, you probably find it odd that I planned something over a year before I actually did it, since most colossal decision making in my life is made spontaneously particularly when it comes to moving abroad, but I swear, there is a method to my madness. I knew that if I didn't have an exit plan in place before the end of my second year in Czech Republic that it would be far too easy for me to extend my contract (the visa was valid for another couple years, I had an amazing group of friends, I loved my work, the kids, the country, the beer, the hockey...what would be stopping me?), which isn't a bad thing, except that I already knew I didn't want to settle down in Czech Republic and with every year my roots would get a little bit deeper making it harder to leave and so I needed an epic adventure to get me out of my comfort zone and back out in the unknown and what better way to do that than to book 4 months volunteering in Kenya starting 2 weeks after my official end date?

So now here I am, sitting on a bed in my host family's house in Mombasa, where we (me and my three fellow volunteers) have cultivated a mild addiction to an English dubbed Colombian soap opera, drank a significant amount of chai, chased numerous cockroaches with a rather poor success rate (there was one time when Kylie thinks she may have got one...not sure how you can be uncertain about whether or not you killed a monstrous cockroach but I am willing to accept that as our one and only victory), plotted to kill some overly vocal nocturnal geese, tried camel milk (which literally tastes like licking a camels hump - not the best), read a women's magazine from 1991 with some particularly insightful articles like 'Are you turning in to your mother? How to stop those scary symptoms before it's too late' with a well-intended top ten TIM symptoms list meant to prepare/frighten us and been awoken more than once by some rather enthusiastic early morning playing of Bryan Adams.

Let that be your introduction to our Kenyan life for now, I will write a more thorough description of the work we are undertaking later. For now, it's off to bed for me where I will attempt to get a good nights sleep despite the abundance of farm animals lurking outside our bedroom window.

bathing in beer

As soon as I found out that a beer spa was a real thing I knew I had to experience it. Combining two of my favourite things could only result in general epicness, besides, where else in the world can you bathe in beer and call it a spa treatment? Well, actually it turns out a few places including Germany and Austria, but it originated in Chodová Planá at the family run Chodovar Brewery and so we set off to experience the original "Beer Wellness Land" and that's got to count for something, right?

Of course it only makes sense that the country that consumes more beer per capita than any other country in the world, would invent the beer spa where you are first submerged in a combination of 'dark bathing beer', mineral water, crushed herbs, hops and active beer yeast for 20 minutes before being taken in to a separate room to be swaddled. Legit. They swaddle you like an oversized infant. And it's amazing.

Chodovar Brewery is situated close to the German border about 2 hours outside of Prague or an hour outside of Karlovy Vary, which is where we left from. If you do go, print directions first because the signs are ambiguous at best, we literally saw a billboard for the spa that cryptically described it as being 'only 9km from here' on both sides, giving you a 9km radius of the billboard to choose from and sending us 9km in the wrong direction rendering us late for our original appointment and forced to reschedule for the following morning. Thankfully the trip wasn't totally fruitless because aside from housing the first beer spa in the world they also have an impressive cave restaurant 'Ve Skále' (which literally translates to 'in the rock') built in 800 year-old granite cellars, where we were able to pass a couple hours dining on delicious Czech food and drinking their equally delectable beers. The remainder of the afternoon was spent exploring the spa town Mariánské Lázně (10 minutes from Chodová Planá) with it's beautiful colonnades, singing fountain and enjoying beers in the park before heading back to Karlovy Vary for a BBQ with friends.


Thankfully we arrived on time the following morning and found ourselves being directed down a staircase to a set of cellars, where we were told to ring a bell outside a heavy wooden door and wait to be granted permission to enter. I honestly wouldn't have been shocked had the door opened to reveal an elderly cloaked man holding a torch in a dimly lit corridor, and was a bit disappointed when the door opened to reveal a very normal man in very normal spa technician clothes, the only thing that differed from a normal spa was that the scents of jasmine and lavender had been replaced with that of 'a freshly brewed dark beer'. He quickly handed us towels that were more along the line of tablecloths then towels and directed us to a changeroom where we were to shed our clothes and return donning tablecloth-togas.

From there the woman we referred to as our 'beer mum' took over, guiding us to our separate baths in a communal room where she then individually removed our towels and lent us a hand to climb in to the rather slippery tubs before then returning with cold glasses of beers for us. I suppose the beers are to ensure we didn't try drinking the bath water, which of course we did purely out of curiousity and frankly it tasted a bit metallic (likely due to the unsavoury mineral water and metal bathtubs). It was somewhat surreal to be in an old stone cellar with 3 of my friends sitting around in our own individual baths sipping beers while submerged in unfermented beer. I think we more or less giggled the entire time we were there. After 20 minutes our beer mum returned, urging us to finish our beers and helping us one at a time out of the baths and back in to our towels. She then left us to replenish our glasses while our 'beer dad' took us in to a dimly lit room lined with loungers that we were instructed to lay face up on (which as I am writing this realize how dodgy that sounds, but I assure you there was nothing sinister about this room), from there he went to us one by one swaddling us in large fleece blankets and asking us if we were comfortable, we half expected him to lean in to kiss our foreheads and then read us Goodnight Moon, which would have been a nice touch.

For the next 20 minutes we alternated between short naps and sneaking out of bed to take pictures of us rolled up like a bunch of sausage rolls. When our 20 minutes were up our beer dad came back to unswaddle us which wasn't really necessary since we had made such a disaster of the blankets with our beer drinking and photo taking. We were instructed back in to the changeroom to re-dress and emerged feeling rejuvenated and healthy and softer plus I felt substantially less hungover after the process, which seems counterintuitive since the entire experience revolved around alcohol but hair of the dog I suppose.

All in all I highly recommend czeching it out and when you're finished hitting up the cave restaurant for a hearty meal. And since the treatment (including your beers) only comes out to 660Kc ($33US) you'd be hard pressed to come up with a reason why not to.

teaching in the land of hockey and beer: Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is essentially the polar opposite of Indonesia:

The language is extremely difficult, hockey prevails over football, there are 4 distinct seasons (though I could quite happily do without the arctic style winter),  they are the second least religious country in Europe with just over 19% claiming to follow a religion on the 2011 census, the population of the entire country is less than that of Jakarta, the air is clean, litter is sparse and pork graces every menu. In short, I couldn't have found a more opposite country if I had tried.

I live in Liberec, a small city of around 100,000 situated about an hour north of Prague at the base of a small mountain range. My main goal in finding my next home after Indonesia was to be surrounded by the colour green, and not just in packaging floating down the river but in the form of trees and grass, to be surrounded by air that wasn't doing permanent damage to my respiratory system. (When I came home from Jakarta one of my best friends asked me 'So...is this your voice now?' I honestly hadn't noticed a difference but the general consensus seemed to be that I now had a rather unhealthy rasp.) So you can imagine my delight at ending up here surrounded by forest, mountains and a nice little reservoir where you can drink beers in the sun.

Everything that I longed for while in Indonesia was nestled here in a quaint little country with some questionable traditions. And luckily for me, unlike most European countries the Czech Republic doesn't require you to be EU to work here. So through the process of elimination they quickly raced to the top of the list of possible destinations.

It wasn't hard to fall in love with the Czech Republic what with it's medieval towns and picturesque landscape, Czechs on the other hand take their time. The main difference between Indonesia and Czech Republic is the people. Indonesians made you love them straight away with bright smiles and gentle gestures, Czechs on the other hand want you to win them over, they're not going to like you just because you're there, they need convincing that you are in fact a likable person, but once convinced they are some of the loveliest most generous people you will have the pleasure of meeting. So don't bother feeling dejected if your service doesn't come with a smile, no ones does.

Teaching contracts here usually run for a regular school year (September to June) and the monthly wage is around $1000 depending on who you work for. Unlike (most of) Asia, here your accommodation is not included (I share a flat with 2 American girls and we each pay around $200/mth including bills - the first year I was here the company I am working for helped me organize my accomdation, the second year my co-worker/friend, Petra, helped me find a new flat), grocery bills are usually around $20/week and eating out tends to be between $5-10 (depending on whether it's lunch or dinner since most restaurants have a cheaper lunch menu), beer is legitimately cheaper than water - and runs at about $1.25 at restaurants and $0.50 at the shop I can count on one hand the amount of times I have not ordered beer with my meal since I moved here.

A main selling point for me was the fact that Liberec has a Czech Extraliga (ELH) hockey team, which living up to my national stereotype was important for me after a year and a half in South East Asia where hockey plays a non-existent role. Not only is it quality hockey here but going to a game usually costs around $15 (including a delicious klobása, 3 beers and a ticket about 6 rows from the ice), that kind of price would buy you a six pack and an evening on your couch at home.

I am quickly approaching my departure date and with only 8 weeks left here I can genuinely say I am going to miss it. A. LOT. I have made some amazing friends here and in July will be celebrating one of my best friend's weddings, which will be bittersweet since it will also mark the end of my time here. I have been inside a church decorated with bones (Kostnice Sedlec), seen a ridiculous amount of live hockey, walked through some of the most impressive rock formations I have ever laid eyes on (Adršpach-Teplice Skály) starred in a dubious maternity photo shoot, done wine tours in Moravia and will spend next weekend at a beer spa where you legitimately bathe in beer while drinking beer, and that's only to name a few of the amazing things I have done/experienced here. When I came to Europe for the first time in 2003 I left having fallen in love with the Czech Republic, little to my knowledge 8 years later I would move here and fall in love with it all over again.



 Photos from top to bottom: looking out over the Prague Christmas Markets from the Old Town Hall Tower, a view of Prague, the reservoir in Liberec, 'The Mayor and his Wife' at Adršpach-Teplice Skály, the lake at Adršpach-Teplice Skály and Kostnice Sedlec (Sedlec Ossuary) in Kutna Horá

being a teacher in crazy beautiful Indonesia

Technically speaking I wasn't even allowed to teach in Indonesia because they have a law that says you must be at least 25 years old and I was 23 at the time, but one of the advantages to a country that is openly corruption ridden is that with a little money in the right pocket you can do just about anything. (Seriously, we even managed to bribe our way in to the National Football Stadium to score a goal as a part of a challenge through our school, I also rode on the back of a police motorcycle without a helmet through downtown Jakarta for the same reason). So my being 2 years junior to the offical limit was a non-issue.

I had no idea what I was getting in to but I prepared myself for the worst. My figuring is that if you arrive thinking everything is going to go smoothly then you will be sorely disappointed no matter where you are, however, if you arrive assuming that you will be robbed, left hungry and stuck in a hut then you will be very grateful for anything better than that.

So when I was told that my shared accomodation would have airconditioning, I pictured a rusty old fan, when I was told I would have my own room I pictured paper dividers set up between straw mats layed out on the floor, and when I asked if I would be met at the airport and received this reply from the company I was going to work for "I'll be teaching classes, so you will be met at the airport by Mo, one of the teachers. He's unique, not at all typical of an EF teacher, so don't be put off by his outrageous behaviour", I assumed they weren't taking the piss but rather sending a crazy person to pick me up.


Luckily, everything was better than anticipated. Mo, turned out not to be a deranged psychopath. I did in fact have a room of my own (it even had a lock on the door, however the only window faced in to the kitchen instead of the more traditional 'view of the outside') which came equipped with a real working airconditioner. So for all intents and purposes I was in fact going to be living in a house. A house which I could theoretically lock said psychopaths out of.

This was by no means 5 star accomodation, we had everything from rats to floods. When you pulled open the cutlery drawer you literally had to wait for the cockroaches to run to the back before you could pull out utensils, toilet paper was unflushable, hot water was non-existant, mold was rampant and leaks were an everyday issue during rainy season (which lasts half the year), there was a time when our water pump was broken and we had to use the water that was leaking through our roof to flush our toilets. And as far as Indonesian standards went, we were living well.


Living in Indo is not for the faint of heart. If you want comfortable accommodation you need to either work for an Internationl School or pick a different country.


I was working for a franchise called EF English First and was based in Central Jakarta, unlike working at an international school or even a regular school for that matter, we were simply a language school, meaning we were essentially an after school activity for kids or an after work learning centre for adults. So instead of waking up at a normal time and having a 9-5, our classes started around 2 or 3pm which meant we didn't go in to the office until around 12 to do lesson planning and you didn't finish until around 9pm. The result being that we wouldn't usually have dinner until after work (classes tended to be back to back with not enough time between for a meal) or go to bed until around 2am, which meant waking up late - usually around 10 or 11am. It was a bizarre system, but it worked.


Indonesia may not have been easy, but what it lacked in organization it made up for in adventure and friendliness.

Indonesians are hands down some of the nicest people in the world. No matter where I was people were forever trying to help me get where I was going (even if their directions were wrong) or just smiling and calling 'Hey Mister' (not offensively, more as a slight misunderstanding of the definition of mister). Of course by the end of the year I definitely craved walking down the street anonymously, but in saying that, I now miss being told I look beautiful by random strangers even when I looked my worst, can't have it all I suppose.

Beauty wasn't the only thing on their mind, Indonesians have a habit of asking very personal questions. When teaching a Business English class once, I asked my students to work together to create a list of 20 appropriate questions they could ask a foreign business partner. Here's a small sample from their uncomfortable answers:

What is your religion?
How old are you?
Are you single?
What is your address?

They were honestly shocked when I told them that none of those questions would be deemed appropriate by their foreign counterpart and that some may even consider them to be rude. Indonesians are just very open people and by showing interest in your life they are showing an interest in you, they really do want to hear your answer and they were very surprised to find that you may not want to answer at all.

Religion is a big deal in Indonesia, everyone is something. It's even printed on their ID cards (they are given six religions to choose from: Islam, Christianity, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and most recently Confucianism - which I'll be honest, I had to google) The interesting thing is that there didn't appear to be any strife between the religions, or even any resentment towards me for not being religious. I was constantly asked about my religion and when I answered that I wasn't religious, they would just nod their head and smile, no one tried to convert me or ostracize me, I was just accepted, which is a lot more than I can say for most countries. Hillary Clinton even commented once that 'If you want to see democracy, Islam, modernity, and women’s rights coexisting in one place, then come to Indonesia. Because I believe this place is more about the future than many other places in the world'.
And if the wonderful people weren't enough to win you over, surely the tropical landscape (from unexplored rainforests to active volcanos), diverse cultures (there are around 300 native ethnicities in Indonesia with 742 different languages and dialects) and food (think creamy peanut sate, spicy fried rice and fresh fruit - all being sold for less than $1 on the street) would.

I absolutely adored my time in Indonesia, it was a struggle for sure, what with over population, some of the most intense traffic I have ever witnessed and a thick layer of pollution blanketing the cities. But I also climbed two active volcanoes, took weekend trips to tropical islands (that costs me less than $100US including my flights, hotels and food), ate a massive amount of delicious street food, tasted Kopi Luwak (the most expensive coffee in the world because it is literally pooped out by a cat), planted rice in a rice padi and met amazing people whom I will never forget. So was it worth it? What do you think.



(Photos top to bottom: with some of the children out at Himmata Orphanage & School for Street Children where I volunteered as a teacher on Sundays, Puppets for sale in Jogjakarta, with one of our hosts during a homestay program in Cianjur where we learnt how to plant rice and visited a floating village, Gili Trawangan, and last but not least, spending Christmas with my friends Tiara & Fika's family)

Teaching ESL

On a fairly regualr basis I find myself writing to people who are interested in teaching ESL (English as a Second Language), sometimes just generally, but most often either with regards to Indonesia or Czech Republic. So I finally decided to put all the info in one place, I'll put it in to three parts starting with teaching ESL abroad, followed by Indo and then lastly CZ so that everyone can (hopefully) find what they are looking for, but if I miss something or you have more questions, just ask.

So I suppose I'll start with the conundrum: How does one end up teaching when they aren't actually a teacher?

For me it started just before my 23rd birthday, I was living in Victoria, Canada where I was born and raised. I had a great job that I adored, working at an Adoption Agency, and was living in a beautiful flat with one of my best friends. But something was missing. I realized I didn't really have anything tying me down, I didn't own the flat or even a (nice) car for that matter, I wasn't dating anyone and while yes, I loved my job, was that really enough to keep me in one place? As it turns out the answer to that is a steadfast, no.

The only issue was that while I wanted to travel more (I had already lived in Australia for a year and backpacked around both Europe and Thailand) I didn't have the money to fund a trip, nor the means to pull off a heist, so my friend suggested teaching ESL. The idea had crossed my mind before, but I thought (quite logically) that you needed a degree to teach, which it turns out, overseas anyway, you don't. Teaching ESL is more of a 'fake it till you make it' type gig. Though not having a degree limited where I could and couldn't teach by quite a large margin, I was still able to find a handful of countries where I was qualified, simply because English was my first language. And so my decision was made.

I took a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course throughout November, quit my job, sold my car, moved back in with my parents and started applying for jobs, within a month of my application being sent out I had interviewed, bought a ticket and was on my way to Indonesia to start as an ESL teacher in the capital city, Jakarta. It really is that quick. There are quite literally always job openings somewhere in the world all you have to do is find one you trust and go.

As for taking your TEFL, there are a lot of options out there, you can take the course either at home - wherever that may be - or you can do it abroad (it's offered in Thailand, Spain, Czech Republic, Greece and Vietnam amongst other exotic locations) most courses are about 4 weeks long and cost somewhere in the range of $1000US, but that's a ballpark range and fees will vary depending on the company/country you choose. Once you are finished, if you have a degree you will pretty much be able to work ANYWHERE in the world (the only exception is the Middle East, where they expect you to be an actual teacher with experience and a teaching degree, fair play I suppose). But other than that having a TEFL/TESL Certificate really makes the whole 'the world's your oyster' a reality.

The best salaries are usually in Asian countries, they also generally pay for your flight - reimbursed at the end of your contract - and your accommodation, though in saying that while Indonesia paid for both my flight and my accommodation, I didn't make a high salary and my accomodation was not comparable to what I have been told is on offer in Korea or Japan. But Indonesia is cheap and I wasn't going for the money.

There are so many options with teaching ESL that you really need to decide what you want before starting your search, think about which continent you would like to be on, how long you are willing to sign on for (do you want a contact for one year or do you want to do a couple months in one place and then move on to somewhere new)? How much money you would like to make? And then start your search. It's easy to spend hours browsing the listings so it's good to narrow down your list a bit so you don't get too overwhelmed.

Hopefully that helps anyone who is interested in trying it out! It's definitely been worthwhile for me, there is no way I could have afforded to see as much of the world as I have without it. So if you are on the fence just do what I do every time I am faced with making a big decision, look at all the aspects and then ask yourself: Why not?