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When I returned back to Leicester in the summer of 2012, I‘d contracted full blown symptoms of the travel bug... I needed another stamp in my passport, another terrifying but exhilarating experience that you could only find outside the every day normalities of what you’re used to. I started looking for teaching opportunities abroad, paid or non paid and at this point my fears of travelling to other worlds were cured by going to the rural depths of Eastern Africa, so I was game for anything. I seen an advert online about a TEFL paid apprenticeship in Vietnam, so I signed up immediately. I passed the 120hours TEFL online course, Skype interviews and was set to go.... I couldn’t wait. A week before I was set to go, I received an email, “We’re sorry to inform you that we’ve had trouble with the working visas and unfortunately you won’t be approved to teach in Vietnam” or something along those lines. I was devastated. A day later I received a phone call from one of the tour operators; they explained they’d set up another option that would let us have two weeks in Vietnam; a plane to Bangkok where we’d spend a week finishing our practical course; then two days in Hong Kong; where we’d travel over the border to Shenzhen; from there we’d be dropped off at our allocated school destinations. They had me at plane to Bangkok. The first month of all the above went how you’d expect it to go, absolutely effing brilliant. However, it was all downhill from the moment we stepped foot in China. I wasn’t wanting to go China in the first place but the idea of travelling to all those cities in Asia in one go, was too much to pass up on. I thought, “what the hell right, China can’t be that bad”....My god, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was paired up with one of my drinking buddies along the trip, a Hairy Russian fella named Max. We were sent to Guandong, a province not far north from the border; in the outside skirts of the city; about an hour outside; we called it the dirtiest place on earth. Spitting is one thing you had to get used to, the regularly sounds of passengers on my 2 hour round trip bus journey, hocking up flem then spitting it on the floor had become something of an ability to block out what would normally make you wretch just thinking about. You couldn’t stand for a minute in the nearest town centre without a man or child defecating next to you, or rat running up the street as if it was on its daily jog. Now I’m not saying everywhere in China is like this and I’m sure everyone else’s experiences there have been perfect for them, but what really tipped it over the edge for me and my Russian comrade was the infestation of bed bugs in our apartment. For days I’d been coming back from school with red rashes all along my back, it then become red raw and measles like, all the way around my body. I’d gone to the hospital with Max and the doctor told me I had a severe case of bed bugs and our apartment needed to be fumigated immediately. He gave me some cream for my bed bug bites and became quite joyful, he took a shine to my hairy Russian friend, the doctor only having little English kept repeating to him, “King Kong in Quandong”, I found it hysterical so I relaxed a little about my serious case of bed bugs infestation. After having our apartment fumigated, all our clothes frozen for a week, we decided we’d had enough of China and got the first plane to Bangkok, where we met my sister-in-law in Pattaya... after spending a few months partying around Thailand, me and Max were broke and decided to join my sister-in-law in the UK to work on the summers music festivals selling Thai noodles. That summer my sister-in-law was also pregnant with Max’s baby, safely to say, she never seen Max again and The King Kong in Quandong, was long gone.