Work Your Way Around the World [Paperback]

You want to travel around the world. But how can you afford such a trip?

A grim spell of working overtime and denying yourself a social life is one route to being able to join a safari in Tanzania, a water sport instructor's course on the Mediterranean or a bungee jump in New Zealand. But what if it were possible to skip this stage and head off towards the horizon sooner than that?

Work Your Way Around the World is the trusted guide for the self-funded world traveller, now in its 15th edition and fully updated to explain how you can fund your trip by finding temporary work opportunities abroad – both in advance and on the spot while travelling around the world. Work-for-keep arrangements on a New Zealand farm or Costa Rican eco-lodge will mean that you have to save far less than if you booked a long-haul package holiday to those destinations.

Incorporating hundreds of first-hand accounts from people who have actually done the jobs with a mass of hard factual information to offer authoritative advice on how to find work from selling ice cream in Cape town to working as a film extra in Bangkok, Work Your Way Around the World gives information on all the main industries offering temporary work including:

Tourism
Teaching English
Childcare
Voluntary work
Business
Hotels and catering
Pubs and Clubs
Ski Holiday companies
Activity holidays
Farming and many more...

 
Working abroad is an excellent way to experience a foreign culture from the inside, but job and work opportunities abroad, like jobs at home, must be ferreted out. Work Your Way Around the World will help you do just that.

Written by the world expert on working around the world, this book is crammed with information and tips from people who are out there living their dream. It reveals the best job opportunities, how to get work permits, tips for travelling safely and much more:

-A broad range of jobs from the everyday to the extraordinary
-Up-to-date contact details for hundreds of jobs
-Advice from other travellers who have been there and done it
-Help on finding and securing work whatever country you are in

Working your way around the world is an adventure - and yours starts here!

The idea of going all the way around the world holds more than a touch of romance. From the early heroic navigators like Ferdinand Magellan to the fi ctional traveller Phileas Fogg, circumnavigators of our planet have always captured the imagination of adventurous souls. Simon Reeve's globetrotting television series and award-winning travel blogs like twoguysaroundtheworld.com attract huge audiences, perhaps because so many of us relish a chance to imagine ourselves - impossibly ambitious
as it sounds - as round-the-world explorers.
Nothing can compare with the joy of the open road. The sense of possibility and adventure brings feelings of exhilaration, long submerged in the workaday routines of home. Cheap air travel has opened up parts of the globe once reserved for the seriously affl uent. When travelling in far-flung corners of the world, you can escape the demands of modern life in the Western world, the chores,
the clutter, the technology. Whatever your stage of life, travelling spontaneously means you have the freedom to choose from an infi nite spectrum of possibilities. Those who have experienced independent travel normally catch the bug and long to visit more places, see more wonders and spend a longer time abroad. Today, trekking in the hinterland of Rio de Janeiro or diving in the Philippines can be within the grasp of ordinary folk. The longing might stem from a fascination left over from childhood
with an exotic destination like Madagascar or Patagonia. The motivation might come from a friend's reminiscences or a television travelogue or a personal passion for a certain culture or natural habitat.

At some point a vague idea begins to crystallise into an actual possibility. That is the point at which the purple prose of brochure-speak must be interrupted by hard-headed
planning. The fi rst question is always: how can I afford such a trip? Magellan had the backing of the King and Queen of Spain, Phileas Fogg was a gentleman of independent means and Simon Reeve could call on the resources of the BBC. How can ordinary people possibly move their dreams on to reality? The conventional means to an exciting end is to work and save hard. A grim spell of working overtime and denying yourself a social life is one route to being able to join a safari in Tanzania, a
watersport instructor's course on the Mediterranean or a bungee jump in New Zealand. But what if it were possible to skip this stage and head off towards the horizon sooner than that? Instead of trying to finance the expensive trips advertised in glossy travel brochures, what about trying to find alternative ways of experiencing those same places at a fraction of the cost?

The catchy phrase `Work Your Way Around the World' may contain the answer to the thorny question of funding. Picking up bits and pieces of work along the way can go a long way to reducing the cost. Even if it is unrealistic to expect to walk into highly paid jobs in Beijing or Berlin (though they do exist), other informal ways exist of offsetting the cost of travel. Work-for-keep arrangements on a New Zealand farm or Costa Rican eco-lodge will mean that you have to save far less than if you booked a long-haul package holiday to those destinations - in some cases little more than the cost of the fl ight.
Short of emigrating or marrying a native, working abroad is an excellent way to experience a foreign culture from the inside. The plucky Briton who spends a few months on a Queensland outback station will have a different tale to tell about Australia from the one who serves behind the bar in a Sydney pub.

Yet both will experience the exhilaration of doing something completely unfamiliar in an alien setting.
Some take years of toying with the idea, taking a few tentative steps before they fi nally discover the
wherewithal to carry through the idea. Phil Tomkins, a 45-year-old Englishman who spent 2010/11 teaching on the tiny Greek island of Kea, describes the thought processes that galvanised him into action:

I think it comes down to the fact that we are only on this planet for a finger-snap of time and if you have any kind of urge for a bit of adventure, then my advice would be to go for it! And even if it goes all horribly wrong, you can look people in the eyes and say `Well, at least I gave it a try'. You can work 9-5 in an office or factory all day, come home, switch on the Idiot Lantern and sit there watching Michael Palin travelling the world - or you can be bold, seize the day, and do something amazing. One thing I can guarantee: when we are lying on our deathbed many years from now, we will not be saying to ourselves
`Oh, I wish I'd spent more time at that dead-end job and had a little less adventure in my life!'

Anyone with a taste for adventure and a modicum of nerve has the potential for exploring far-flung corners of the globe on very little money. In an ideal world, it would be possible to register with an international employment agency and wait to be assigned to a glamorous job as an underwater model in the Caribbean, history coordinator for a European tour company or snowboard instructor in the
Rockies. But jobs abroad, like jobs at home, must be ferreted out. The hundreds of pages that follow will help you to do just that.