A boomer and a millennial chatting. This is not the boomer from the story, just a google image.
Today I am going to start the first of a three part blog story called “72 hours with a boomer”. It is the story of a boomer I met while in Thailand in the late summer of 2019. I have changed job names, hotel names, company names and the name of the boomer in the story. Here is the look of those things you may find in the story:
The boomer: A large man, shaved head, tattoos and a body showing past gym work that has somewhat faded.
Nawaf: A Saudi worker, who works in the embassy in Bangkok
We slept you: A hotel in the backstreets of the business district where we were given board by the Saudi company. About a five minute to the Saudi Embassy in Bangkok.
Rank1teachers inc: The company me and the boomer now work for.
Thobe and Shmaq professional University: The Saudi University I work for. Called TSPU.
International Bedouin school: The secondary school for failed students and for teacher who The Saudi Company don’t want working at the Saudi University. Called IBS.
Ok, now that we are familiar, let us begin.
Beylikduzu, near Eski Beylikduzu/Esenyurt, where I was living at the beginning of this story.
The story actually begins in Istanbul, Turkey. I was working for an overseas English school. I worked for 28 days on an oil ship as an English teacher, teaching Kurdish, Azerbaijani, and Turkish workers. Then I was supposed to get 28 days of vacation time off the ship and on shore. No matter where I lived, they would pay for my flights, taxis and hotels on my way to the ship. During my onshore time I was staying in a lesser known area of Istanbul called “Esenyurt”, which is near Beylikduzu.
The location of Beylikduzu/Esenyurt in Istanbul.
It was getting close to the end of my onshore time, but there was one small problem. The company I was employed with, had a contract with the ship and the contract was ending. I also had a 4 month preliminary contract and that was also going to end after my next offshore trip. A friend kept asking me what I was going to do if the contract ended, but I was sure it would continue. Still, to be safe I considered teaching online. After doing some research it seemed like I could make more than enough money doing that, so I made that my backup plan.
Fatih, Turkey’s first oil drilling ship. I spent 70 days there in total.
However, on this trip, I started to get annoyed at my company. They wanted daily lesson plans emailed, and kept me on the ship for 5 weeks instead of 4. I also, was annoyed at them, as every time I gave them feedback they just down played it or ignored it. In my mind, I started planning to not renew my contract, and decided I would pursue the online teaching gig. Even though, I decided this, I thought it was a bad idea to tell them early. I didn’t want it to affect my salary, or transportation getting back to Istanbul.
My online teaching setup.
Back in Istanbul, I set off to setup my online teaching background and also applied to work at three different online companies. The interviews went well, but there were some technical problems. They wanted me to have a 120 hour TEFL and I only had a 100 hour one. PayPal was banned in Turkey. The only option was to do a wire transfer to pay for the company’s online TEFL course. I went to the bank but they refused to do the transfer, saying that I had to do it online because it was cheaper. They were right of course, it was $75 to do the wire transfer inside the bank, and only $25 online.
I decided to try another online company. This time they accepted my TEFL but the interviewer seemed disinterested the entire time and they offered me the base pay. They wanted a criminal background check done from the US, but at the time I didn’t have a bank or credit card, so it was impossible to pay for one.
I sat thinking about how hard doing online teaching was in Turkey. Also, after reading about the stress and problems teachers were having while teaching online, I thought a bit. “Why work for $2,800 a month online, when I could just go to Oman or Saudi Arabia and make the same money?” Thus, I set off to apply for teaching jobs.
It wasn’t hard to get a job offer from Saudi Arabia. I was teacher with 5 years of teaching experience at that time, so I applied for 12 jobs in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. In 24 hours I heard back from 3 jobs in Saudi Arabia. I chose a company called “Rank1teachers.” I was then told I needed to start the visa process at the Saudi Embassy, by the company’s visa agent.
America, or America?
The people at the embassy and the visa process center both told me that I couldn’t apply for a visa in Turkey, but would need to return to the USA to do the visa. The visa agent at rank1teachers kept working for a solution, but then I didn’t hear from him for awhile.
Some current jobs on a job site for ESL teachers called “Tefl.com”
With my savings dwindling down to $1,500, I was getting a bit desperate. The truth was that in Turkey, my personal cost of living every month was $381. This meant I still had a good 4-6 months left of savings, but I was in a bit of a panic anyhow. I applied for every job I could find on TEFL.com and a few other ESL job finding sites. I had around 10 interviews, mostly for jobs in Poland and Russia, but I also had a few from Italy, Kazakhstan and China. The Russian jobs also wanted me to go to the USA to get the visa, the Italian job interviewer asked me if I knew how to do the visa process as an American (she didn’t know). Finally, the Polish job interviews went well, but in the end I wasn’t able to get either of those either.
A couple of Whatsapp voice messages
After applying for around 81 jobs, doing a little over a dozen interviews and being out of almost all options, I got a voice message from Nawaf, the visa agent from “Rank1teachers”. He gave me an offer, that I couldn’t refuse. He would fly me to Thailand and pay for the ticket, I would pay for my hotel and he would do he visa in Thailand. Then after the visa was completed he would fly me to Riyadh. At first, I was a little bit afraid, not knowing what was going to happen. However, he was paying for he flight, so I thought in the worst case scenario, I could find a job in Thailand or return to Turkey and teach there if it didn’t work out. I told him, “send me the flight information and I will do it.”
A Thai plane, soaring through the sky.
I packed my essentials, gave my key to a close Turkish friend, and told him to keep it and if the visa was successful to give it to my landlord. He agreed and the landlord also agreed.
Less than 48 hours later, I was soaring through the sky and ready to flip through the time zones. When I landed, I would be in a region I had never been in before, with no internet or phone plan, no idea how to get around, and nothing more than the airport WiFi to work with. Surely there would be a line of taxi drivers licking their chops and ready to help me, as soon as I arrived.
My hero, ready to milk me for all I was worth.
When I left the customs area, the airport was large and packed full of people. Surprisingly enough, I was able to get my luggage pretty quickly. I got in a queue to get a taxi driver. My message from Nawaf, told me “see you in thirty minutes”. For some reason, I didn’t believe that was going to happen.
As I drove across Bangkok, I sat wondering how much the fare was going to cost. The ride was at about 2 hours, when we arrived at the embassy, and it was closed.
Thai Motorcyclists and moped drivers.
He took me towards the hotel, which took around 45 minutes to get to (it would take me 7 minutes on foot). The first thing I noticed, was the large amount of people in traffic on motorcycles and mopeds. It was like I was surrounded by a Mongolian horde. Finally, we left the main road and were going down narrow dirt back-roads. When we arrived at the hotel, I expected my fare to cost 1,000 to 2,000 BAHT, but it was only 700 ($21).
A hotel in Thailand called “Pietra”, mine was called “We slept U hotel”.
I stepped out of the cab and gathered my bag. The hotel was called “We slept you Hotel.” I opened the door and prepared “to get slept”. Nawaf had signed me up for 7 days, so it seemed like he expected I would be there at least a week. I got the key and made for my room. The interior was new and nice to look at (unlike the neighborhood).
A familiar sight in Bangkok.
As I laid down to sleep, I knew I was about to sleep well. Then from the neighbor on my left I heard a familiar moaning and knocking sound. Someone next to me was “getting slept”. When they were done (3 minutes later), the other neighbor had a turn. After the battle of the bangs had ended, I did get a really good night’s sleep.
The streets of Bangkok.
The next morning, I got a new message from Nawaf, asking me to come to the embassy again. I told him, “be there in thirty minutes”. I checked the route on google maps. I tried to memorize it, but no matter how long I stared at it, I knew deep down, I was going to be getting lost. Sure enough, things weren’t looking good as I walked around. I asked a few people where the Saudi Embassy was. Finally, someone knew. I made it back to where I had started from, then went the right way.
Nobody was inside, I made my way up the stairs to a room where there were a few people working. Nawaf was there with a large man. He sounded American. He was wearing shorts, a T-shirt and had a shaved head. He was a boomer for sure. I was told by a Thai office worker to have a seat.
It wasn’t long before I was talking to Nawaf, face to face, for the first time. He thanked me for trusting him and told me about how things were going to go. I asked him about half a dozen questions, then he told me what he needed from me. I was to bring it back in the afternoon. With the meeting over, I headed back downstairs. As I walked out of the doors of the embassy, there was the man again. Waiting for me at the corner of the embassy. It was the boomer.
A boomer, shirtless, on a beach somewhere. Not the boomer, who I met.
He was friendly, talking to me as if we had met before. I thought it was slightly awkward, but I had no one else to talk to, so I thought “Might as well”. I told him I was heading back to the hotel and he offered to help me get back there. He told me, he was staying in the same one. On our way back to the hotel he talked my ear off. Both of them, were on the ground by the time we made it to the hotel. It was as if he had been waiting to talk to someone. He talked about his experience in Thailand, China, and got dreamy about the nostalgia from the olden days “before the other tourists came”. When we made it to the hotel, I told him I needed to go back to the embassy with some documents and he said he had the same problem. He talked to me for another 10 minutes in the lobby and then I told him I would meet him in 20 minutes to go back to the embassy.
That’s it for now folks.
Thank you for reading this first episode and making it to this sentence. What will the boomer do to me? What will he talk about? Will we go somewhere?
You’ll have to find out next week, when I post the 2nd episode of this 3 episode story!