Bubble T wrote: ↑Fri Sep 02, 2022 11:08 pm For context, I moved to Cambodia at 17 and returned to England at 34 with my partner and our son having never lived outside of Cambodia as an adult before.

It's been very difficult for me and the only reason I've survived it and made it work is that I already had a decent job working remotely so I haven't had to think about finding employment or stressing about day to day finances.

Just the basics of working out how to pay tax, get around and do day to day stuff was stressful. I didn't have a UK driving licence and there was a huge backlog due to corona so I was unable to drive for my first 10 months here. I had no references from previous landlords so finding a place to rent was tough. I had no credit history. All the usual stuff that you'd expect someone in their mid 30's to have and know I didn't.

It's now been little over a year and a half and things are a bit easier. We have a beautiful house in a beautiful village, I got my driving licence and a fun car to wiz around in on the local winding roads, my son is all settled in at the village nursery school and I feel pretty much like a norma human being again.

The most shocking part to me has been how expensive everything is. I make a six digit annual salary which puts me in the top 1% of earners in the country and we save very little of it every month despite not living an especially "wealthy lifestyle" (my car is my only luxury). I have no idea how people on average salaries get by. Tax is absolutely horrific, just our electric bills from next month will be more than our rent was on a house in a private gated community in Phnom Penh. Don't even get me started on nursery costs.

I do love it here, it's a beautiful place and I can't think of anywhere I'd rather raise my son, but it does have some major downsides. When we've been here for long enough to get my parner her British citizenship the plan will be to sell up, get an expedition vehicle and travel the world while homeschooling our son. Until then, this is where we'll be.

Bubble T wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 10:47 pm

David Gordon wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 6:22 pm @Bubble T your story is fascinating how you arrived to Cambodia age 17 and spent most of your adult life here and then was able to land back in Britain and earn well above the average. If you care to share - how did you do it? You must have accumulated a lot of skill and developed quite the CV while in Cambodia.

Sorry this is going to be off topic but to answer the question:

I grew up in a very dodgy part of a big city in England and always wanted to get out as quickly as I could so spent a summer delivering pizza for domino's and making coffee in a coffee shop to save up some money to get away after my GCSE's. I was very fortunate to have an Assisted Place (kind of like a scholarship for kids whose parents are below a certain income threshold - they don't do them anymore) at a posh private school so I had received a relatively good secondary education far beyond what others who grew up in my area of town received.

I started out in Phnom Penh teaching English for a few months and then got a job managing Riverhouse Lounge. I used that to build some contacts to start making basic websites and database stuff for local businesses. Eventually that turned in to a full on software development business which I grew for several years. It had a lot of ups and downs and ended up crashing in a fairly spectacular manner. After that I went to work for a telecoms company, then helped a Lithuanian dude set up a company importing used cars from America to sell to local dealers, then worked for a Vietnamese company that imported cleaning chemicals and construction materials to Cambodia for hotels and building projects.

During all that time I had some big financial ups and downs. There were times when I was driving around in a pimped out Mercedes, and other times when I was basically destitute. When my partner became pregnant I realized I needed to be earning more, to have more stability, and to get a job that would allow me the possibility of leaving Cambodia later down the line if that's what we needed/wanted to do. I applied for a managerial job at a multi billion dollar international company using my IT background but they were pretty unimpressed as all my experience was in Cambodia. I was persistent with them and said I'd take anything they had for me, so I ended up taking a low paying entry level remote position as an admin assistant. I did it because I knew that high paying jobs existed there and getting one would just be a case of putting in the time and effort to prove to them that I could do it.

I worked my way up and then got lucky when there was a massive project I was working on which required us to put out a fairly complicated product on a very tight time scale. Most of the team I was working with was in the UK and I was still in Cambodia so I spent 9-5 in Cambodia working my ass off, then took breaks for 2 hours, and then worked online with the rest of the team from around 7pm until 2am the next morning. I kept that up for about 4 months and it was noticed. Within a few months of that project I was up in to senior management which is where I still am now.

The key lessons to be learned from that are:
- You have to work your ass off and do more than the people you're working with to be noticed and work your way up.
- Working for a large company that makes billions of dollars means that your hard work has the potential to be rewarded. I also worked my ass off at Riverhouse Lounge when I was 17-18 but only ever made about $800 per month because there's a finite limit on how many drinks a bar can sell so there's a finite limit on how much they are going to pay you. If you can help build a product that makes hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and demonstrate that it wouldn't have happened without you, it's a no brainer for them to pay you a six figure salary and still feel like they are getting a good deal. This is one of the big limitations of working for a local company in Cambodia, there aren't many that have the potential to pay you that much even if you work your ass off.

tears_in_rain wrote: ↑Mon Sep 26, 2022 9:16 pm So you are expecting people to believe that a 'multi-billion dollar' company, would employ a nobody from Cambodia over a highly qualified individual (with experience) in the UK? Why do ex-pats come in these forms and make up such grandiose tales? It never ceases to amaze me. A stranger collection of liars and losers, one will never find...

rogerrabbit wrote: ↑Mon Sep 26, 2022 9:44 pm

tears_in_rain wrote: ↑Mon Sep 26, 2022 9:16 pm So you are expecting people to believe that a 'multi-billion dollar' company, would employ a nobody from Cambodia over a highly qualified individual (with experience) in the UK? Why do ex-pats come in these forms and make up such grandiose tales? It never ceases to amaze me. A stranger collection of liars and losers, one will never find...

Did you read it at all? He applied manager level position but they declined, and after his persuasion they ended giving him chance and hired him for a lower level assistant role because his experience was mainly from Cambodia.

John Bingham wrote: ↑Mon Sep 26, 2022 10:53 pm I know BubbleT since about 2005 and can vouch that he isn't really exaggerating anything. He had learned fluent Khmer shortly after getting here and even sang Khmer songs on TV! He had some ups and downs but he always managed well. He's just some sort of enigma.

John Bingham wrote: ↑Tue Sep 27, 2022 12:46 am You believe No Joke Howard though?