Key Takeaways

  • I’ve featured a lot of readers on this website: solo travelers, couples, young and old travelers, Brits, Canadians, and Americans. But there are still
  • Nomadic Matt: Tell everyone about yourself.  Oneika: I am a serial expat, blogger, and travel junkie who has traveled to 68 countries around the world
  • This means that even though I’m used to cold weather, I hate it — the tropics run through my veins! I’m 31 years old and have been living abroad for o

Updated: 12/03/19 | December 4th, 2019

I’ve featured a lot of readers on this website: solo travelers, couples, young and old travelers, Brits, Canadians, and Americans. But there are still a lot of viewpoints I haven’t covered. So today’s reader interview brings some more diversity and perspective to our series. Today we talk to Oneika, a thirty-something Black traveler from Canada who teaches in Hong Kong. A lot of e-mails ask us about racial prejudice on the road, and since it’s a perspective we can’t speak to firsthand, let’s hear from Oneika about that—and teaching!

Route for Less: Tell everyone about yourself.  Oneika: I am a serial expat, blogger, and travel junkie who has traveled to 68 countries around the world! I hail from Toronto, Canada, though my parents were born in sunny Jamaica.

This means that even though I’m used to cold weather, I hate it — the tropics run through my veins! I’m 31 years old and have been living abroad for over eight years now. While I’m a traveler at heart, I’m a teacher by trade and currently teach middle-school English at a private school in Hong Kong.

What inspired your move to Hong Kong and love of travel? My move to Hong Kong was inspired by a burning desire to work and travel in the Far East — Asian culture has always seemed so exotic to me, and the idea of living on the other side of the world appealed to me.

However, my first experience with intercontinental travel began during my third year of university, where I did a year-long study abroad program in France. After I realized that I could make money teaching, I spent a second year in France doing that and then moved on to do the same thing in Mexico.

Wanting more of a culture shock and remembering my initial desire to head to the Far East, I decided to look for teaching jobs in Asia.

What did you do to save up for all your travel? As a university student, I worked odd jobs at a call center and a bank to fund my travels during school breaks. They were mostly low-paying jobs, but through diligence and penny pinching I was able to save $4,000–$7,000 USD from working part-time throughout the school year and nearly full-time from May to August.

My only regret is that I worked entirely in and around my hometown of Toronto and then used my money to take short trips internationally — somehow I never realized that I could make money whilst living abroad until I got into teaching!

At any rate, now that I’ve finished school, have moved abroad, and have been teaching full time for seven years, I try to put aside a set amount of money every month for my travel expenses. I try to cut out unnecessary spending (difficult, because I love to shop!) and prioritize travel instead.

How do you stick to a budget when you travel? I usually plan a trip with a set budget in mind. When I was planning my recent trip to Tokyo, I did a bit of research to get a feel for how much things like transportation, food, and accommodation would cost.

I used this information to decide how much money I would need to spend on the whole trip. I attempt to set a daily budget and try to use only cash or debit when paying for things — I avoid using my credit card at all times.

I try to walk or use the cheapest forms of public transportation once at a destination. Also, I’m at the point where I’ll pick and choose which tourist attractions provide the best value: I realize I don’t need to see everything, and am not interested in spending money on a random museum/shrine/temple just because it’s listed in my guidebook! If money is an issue, I always advise people to only pay to see the things they truly care about.

You’re an English teacher. How did you get into that job? After getting my bachelor’s degree, I taught ESL in the South of France for a year, through an English teaching assistant program offered by the French embassy. During my time in France, I met a French girl who was teaching at a boarding school just outside of London. It was then that I learned about the existence of international schools, which are schools that cater to the expat children of families who have relocated abroad for whatever reason. The language of instruction in most of these schools is English, and many of them follow a Canadian, American, or British curriculum.

When I discovered that to teach in these types of schools I would need to get a Canadian or American teaching license, I returned home and got certified to teach elementary and secondary school English and French.

It was the best decision ever! I secured an international teaching job in Mexico and never looked back. I’ve since taught in international schools in London and Hong Kong. In between I went back to Canada and taught French in a high school, but the draw of international travel made me move back abroad after a year.

Do you find it easy to get work? I have found it pretty easy to get work in my field; there are an abundance of recruiting agencies that are geared to help both international school and ESL teachers find work abroad.

For ESL teachers, organizations like Teach Away and online job boards like Dave’s ESL Cafe are great places to start looking for jobs.

I got my ESL teaching assistant job in France through C