I went to Thailand
chasing a girl.
She said yes.

How TEFL Heaven actually started

I didn't go to Thailand to teach English. I went because I liked a girl who didn't like me back. I was a student in Scotland, she was going to Thailand for the summer, and I did the only sensible thing: I invited myself on her flight. I told her I'd split as soon as we landed in Bangkok. She could go north, I'd go south. Just help me through the airport.

Awkwardly, she said yes. Two weeks later I was walking out of Suvarnabhumi Airport for the first time — and the heat hit me in the face like a wall. I'd grown up in Scotland. I had never felt air like that. I had stepped into a completely new world, and every single thing about it interested me.

At the end of those three months, she invited me to the islands. Ten days in Koh Tao. And something shifted. I wasn't anxious anymore. I wasn't needy. I was just myself — relaxed, present, and happy in a way I hadn't been before. She noticed. She let her hair down. She got to know me for me.

We went back to the UK. A few months later I asked her to marry me. Seven months after that, we were married — and back in Thailand, teaching English again. When we left, we decided to make a business of it. We wanted to help other people have the experience we'd had: the adventure, the personal growth, the fulfilment you get from truly living abroad, not just visiting.

That was over fifteen years ago. We've been married for more than thirteen years, had five kids, and built TEFL Heaven into a family business that has sent over 3,000 teachers to over twelve countries. It's still ours. It's still personal. And I'm still in Bangkok.

When the videos come in — teachers telling us what their year abroad did for them, how it changed them — I love watching them. That's why we do this. Not the business of it. The transformation of it. The thing that happened to me on a beach in Koh Tao, happening to someone else in Seoul or Prague or Medellín.