When planning a working holiday, people forget one thing ... the work.
There’s a small problem with a working holiday: working.
It seems like a fantastic idea. You picture yourself blending in to a foreign culture, meeting locals, making friends, soaking everything up at a nice gentle pace. What you don’t picture is the actual work.
Granted, some people manage to secure a fine balance between working and holiday. I’ve met plenty of Australian ex-pats who are holding down impressive, high-paying jobs that not only allow them to live in style while they do their culture soaker-uppering, but that they also enjoy. Brilliant.
For most working holidaymakers, however, that’s a pipe dream. You’re not working overseas to further your career – you’re working overseas to further your travelling budget. And besides, most serious employers will take one look at that year-long visa (if you even have one), and laugh you out of the building.
So you end up doing some of the jobs I've done.
There's the classic occupation of the desperate backpacker: fruit picking. I did mine in the north of Scotland, which wasn’t ideal, given it’s a place with a summer in name only.
For those who've ever wandered down the grocery aisle and wondered, here’s the rundown. Strawberries are a pain – literally. It’s a case of bending your back for about eight hours straight while you berries alternately into the punnets under your arm, and into your mouth.
Lettuces aren’t a much better. Again, more back bending, only this time you’re cutting them off with a knife and throwing them onto a conveyer belt. Planting them is marginally more enjoyable, since you get to ride in a funny little buggy.
And potatoes? OK, I’ll spare you. You get the drift. The moral of the story is that these are all foodstuffs for which you get paid to pluck, but is it an enjoyable experience? No. Is picking fruit a nice way to spend a holiday? No.
So I became a line cook at a bar in Edinburgh. There, due to the complete lack of any formal training systems in Scotland, I was handed a white jacket and referred to as “chef”. And as “chef”, I would pull out frozen packets of chicken tikka masala, bung them in the microwave until they were just so, then slit them open and upend them into bowls. Et voila.
Again, not what you’d call a fun way to spend a holiday.
Cooking at a Colorado ski resort was similar. There, I’d flick burgers for whiney kids, gloop maple syrup over fat guys’ plates of breakfast burritos, and sweat over the ever-present threat of the company’s random drug tests.
Every once in a while I’d get the chance to go skiing, although I’d usually be far too tired from flicking burgers for whiney kids to bother about it.
A season of that was all I could handle, but I hadn’t learnt my cooking lesson. Next time I was overseas, I landed a job as an onboard cook for a tour company, which might sound like one of the best jobs of all times, and truly, it had its moments.
However, those moments did not include: attempting to buy groceries to feed 40 people for three days in a 45-minute window at a foreign supermarket I’d never visited; attempting to turn those groceries into some semblance of a meal in an hour-long window with only the dubious assistance of four gas burners and a bus driver; carrying a vomiting passenger out of a coffee shop in Amsterdam after she’d over-sampled the local delights; and ferrying a few passengers to hospital after they'd misjudged certain things (alcohol, drugs, bulls) in Pamplona.
I don’t mean to whinge. The truth is, when you’re travelling and you love what you’re doing, you’ll take on almost anything to prolong the experience. Work is money.
But when you’re planning a working holiday, it’s worth thinking about what you’re actually going to be doing, since that’s how you’ll spend the bulk of your time while you’re away.
Is it going to be enjoyable? (Even tolerable will do.) Will you be able to meet people, make friends? Is it going to allow you the time and money to do other things, see other places while you’re there?
That last one is especially important. Remember, it's not a working holiday if you spend all your time working – it's just work.
Have you been on a working holiday? What did you do? Was it worth it?
Stop press!
Do you live in Ho Chi Minh City? Would you like to show an eternally grateful backpacker a decent place to eat or drink next week? If so, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line at bengroundwater@gmail.com, and I swear there’ll be a free 333 in it for you. Maybe even two. Anyone else wanting to get in touch for a general chit-chat, email away, or find me at my website.
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