I flew to Bangkok last October on a one-way ticket and with about $150 in my pocket. My plan was to teach English but after a few sweaty bus rides around the city to a few uninspiring interviews, I soon lapsed into apathy. My dwindling funds still stretched to enjoying the air-con of Internet cafés, however, and I discovered on an ESL website that not only would Korean schools hire someone without even meeting them, and pay $1,500 a month with a free apartment, but they would also send over the plane ticket. Korea was the one country I'd been advised to avoid like the plague, but they just made it too easy.

The only requirements were that I was a native speaker of English, white enough to look good on all the school's promotional literature and possessed a university diploma.

I graduated on Khaosan Road the next day with a BA in English Literature that cost me just Bt2,000. In a matter of minutes I'd accomplished what took most people four years of lectures and large overdrafts to achieve. I put it in the post to an agent in Seoul and he found me a job within days.

I signed a one-year contract but within minutes of landing at the airport in Korea I was checking my watch - only 364 days and 23 and a half hours to go. This was the land of smileless faces in suits who slept at their desks to prove their loyalty to the company.

Arriving at the school, no one explained anything to me and so I played it safe by bowing to everyone - the cleaners included. I won myself a reputation for admirably inappropriate courtesy.

The only thing I was sure of was that the big cheese was the chairman, Mr Kim, a man of status, prestige and vision who saw language as a bridge to unify nations. We didn't talk too much though as he didn't speak any English.

Fortunately, I was teaching adults as opposed to the usual positions open to foreigners in Korea and Taiwan in crowd control (try teaching 10-20 three year-olds the passive tense). The lessons went okay, making it up as I went along, except when the students were actually required to say anything. Then the women would raise one hand to their mouths and titter, whilst the men would suffer a sudden migraine and clutch their foreheads in deep thought.

There was also the question of hierarchy. Most of Asia suffers from this medieval perspective, but Korea in particular. When a Korean enters a room they immediately assess their position relative to everyone else in the room - a student is lower than a doctor, the young are lower than the old and women are always inferior to men.

The effect of this caste system was that nobody would ever disagree with anyone above them in the pecking order. Which was just great for getting debates going.

"So, Chung Lee," I said to one female student, "What do you think about war?"

"Well, it's very bad thing," she said.

"But sometimes war must be fighted!" Jun the Businessman said.

"Yes. He's right," Chung Lee told me.

Having shelled out a fortune to learn English from foreign devils, most students were too shy to actually speak except when I forced them to. They were so scared of making mistakes that they played it safe by sitting in silence. And historians wonder why China, Korea and Japan were so insular for the majority of their histories - they were terrified of expanding their empires in case they actually had to attempt small talk in any of the countries they conquered.

I made my mind up to make a midnight run as soon as I got paid. The directors were shooting me black looks and falling silent whenever I passed - it seemed the immigration office was asking awkward questions about my diploma (I forgot to get any transcripts). It's a sad world when people have forgotten the meaning of trust.

I had the terrible notion they would contact England to see if I really had obtained my diploma, or indeed, if I had ever enrolled at all. The relief I experienced when the director took a chance and paid me my wages was perhaps equivalent to when the parched plains of India receive the first monsoon rains after a merciless summer.

The salary was excellent and for a good three, maybe even four seconds I considered hanging on for another month. But I had to make it to Tokyo in time to for the Christmas markets to sell cheap jewellery on the street. But that's another story.

Perhaps my words on Korea sound a little harsh. And the last thing I'd want to suggest is that my visit there was bereft of positive experiences. Indeed, after 30 days in Korea, everywhere else in the world seems like a great place to be.