2016. I was 25, had a stable job, and was absolutely losing my mind with boredom.
For five years, I worked as an English writing tutor in the Philippines. The work was steady. The pay was okay. Somewhere between fixing comma splices and telling students their conclusion needed more work, I started quietly wondering if this was it.
I didn’t have an answer. Leaving family and friends wasn’t easy. But I had this restless feeling that something was waiting for me somewhere else. So I did the next logical thing and bought a one-way ticket to Vietnam.
What Living in Vietnam Taught Me About Starting Over
Vietnam was never a random choice. Anthony Bourdain had been making it look irresistible for years. So in 2017, I landed in Hanoi with a vague plan to volunteer to teach English and figure out the rest later.
Spoiler: the rest took a while to figure out.
Hanoi does something to you. The coffee is strong and arrives in tiny glasses over ice. The street food smell hits you a full block before you see it. The cafes are tucked into narrow shophouses with mismatched furniture and ceiling fans that do their best. You sit down for what you think is an hour, and somehow it’s been three.
Between classes, I was eating everything, meeting people, and wandering the streets I didn’t know the names of. Nobody was in a rush. Neither was I.
[ Read: How I Transitioned from Corporate Work to a Remote Career ]
How I Built My First Career Abroad in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)
After a short stint in Hanoi, I decided to fly to Ho Chi Minh City. Hanoi was slowly suffocating me. Literally. The pollution was so bad, and my lungs had filed a formal complaint.
Ho Chi Minh City is a different animal. Faster, louder, and considerably less patient. Hanoi eases you in. Saigon just throws you into traffic and wishes you luck.
Finding work was harder than I expected. The city had no shortage of English teachers, and the competition was real. So I pieced things together the best I could. Conversation classes at a small café, shifts at a local language center, private tutoring for a mom and her kids on weekday afternoons. None of it was glamorous. All of it was necessary.
By 2018, the hustle finally paid off. I landed a proper job at a language center. Decent hours, good workmates, and for the first time in a while, something resembling stability.
I liked it there. More than I expected to.
[Read: From OFW to SEO Specialist]
How the Pandemic Pushed Me Into Remote Work
I was still in Ho Chi Minh City when the news started getting serious. By early 2020, it was clear this wasn’t going away. I packed up and flew home to the Philippines.
It was supposed to be temporary. I was back home with no job, no plan, and too much time to think. Irene had been gently nudging me toward remote work for years. With nowhere else to be, I finally had no excuse not to listen.
I’ve known Irene for most of my adult life. We worked together, stayed in each other’s lives, and somewhere along the way, she became less of a sister-in-law and more the person I trusted most. She’s the kind of person who spots potential in people long before they spot it in themselves, and then does something about it. In 2020, I was on the receiving end of that.
She pointed me toward a customer support position at a company where she worked alongside Daniel, someone I would later get to work with and learn from at IreneChan.co. I hesitated. I had never done customer support in my life and had no idea if I was cut out for it. She thought I was. I trusted her enough to try.
Customer support turned into blog writing. Turns out, five years of correcting other people’s sentences had prepared me for something after all. Irene had always been quietly evangelical about remote work. She’d been doing it for years and making it look effortless.
I didn’t know it then, but that job was the first real step toward a life I didn’t know I was building yet.
How I Started Working Remotely Full-Time
After over a year back home, I started feeling that familiar restlessness again. I found a teaching program in Spain, applied, got in, and started packing.
In September 2021, I found myself in a sun-soaked coastal city in Spain, teaching English at a public school. It got me through the door, but it was never really the final plan. The plan, if I’m honest, was to figure out how to never go back to a classroom full-time again.
The city is the kind of place that makes it easy to forget you’re supposed to be stressed about your life. The light is different there. The pace is slower. The Mediterranean has a way of making everything feel more manageable than it actually is.
But I was still piecing things together. The role paid the bills. Remote work filled in the gaps. And Irene, true to form, kept finding small things to send my way: a transcription here, a small writing task there. Just enough to keep the thread going.
By 2023, I decided to move to Madrid, and the thread had become something stronger. Working with Irene’s team consistently meant I could finally do what she had been telling me to do for years: let go of teaching and go fully remote. The freelancer visa made it official.
I remember thinking: this is what she meant all along.
Finding My People at IreneChan.co
In 2023, I officially joined IreneChan.co as a contractor. The work was straightforward, writing articles for Irene’s clients. I liked it immediately. No more commutes, no classroom, no explaining the difference between “their” and “there” for the hundredth time.
What I didn’t expect was how much the team felt like a real team. Communication was clear. The work was interesting. And Irene ran things the way she always had in every context I’d known her, with trust, directness, and a quiet belief that the people around her were capable of more than they realized.
In early 2025, I was promoted to Content Manager. Today, I write and edit articles, manage blog publishing for IreneChan.co, and work across a range of clients in industries I find genuinely interesting.
I admire very few people, but Irene is certainly one of them. She’s running a successful company, managing over 20 talents across different countries, and somehow also being a mom to the best kids through it all. I have nothing bad to say about this woman. Not one thing.
The life I’m living right now, working remotely and doing work I actually care about, I owe a significant part of that to her. I’m honestly not sure how to repay that. What I can do is keep showing up, keep growing, and maybe someday pay it forward the way she did for me.
What Remote Work Actually Looks Like From Madrid
Madrid is warm and always doing something. I work from home, which in Madrid means working from a city that never quite lets you forget it’s there.
I actually have time for a life outside of work. I go to concerts and visit new cities on weekends (even weekdays) without having to negotiate time off with anyone. I have mornings back. I have evenings back. And when I need a real break, I have a boss who doesn’t just allow it. She actively tells you to go. Irene runs a tight ship, but she knows her crew needs rest.
If you’d told me at 25 that I’d end up here, I would have found that very hard to believe. Three countries, one pandemic, and one persistent sister-in-law later, here I am.
Getting to work with both Irene and Daniel at IreneChan.co felt like a full-circle moment. Two people who believed in me at different points, now in the same place, doing work that actually matters.
I don’t have a grand conclusion, just this: I spent a long time waiting to feel ready. Vietnam taught me that readiness is mostly a myth. The pandemic taught me that stability was never as guaranteed as I thought. And Irene taught me that sometimes the best thing someone can do for you is see what you’re capable of before you can see it yourself.
If you have an Irene in your life, listen to her. She saw it coming before I did. She usually does.
I never did figure out what I wanted at 25. Honestly, I’m still not entirely sure today. But somewhere between Hanoi and Madrid, something figured itself out anyway.
