As far as teaching in that part of the world-don't do it!

And now let me post some reasons why that applies to teaching where you are as well. (I know full well that you and some other older posters are not teaching in China, but still, the list and the reasons stand, will provide links to each as I can!)

1) A 2 year visa for married western males to chinese females--BUT YOU CANNOT WORK!!!! (no direct link, but you can google it, it is 100 percent true, and many expats bemoan it)

2) Gangs of male chinese thugs going around beating western men seen with asian females in Beijing at night, an australian got beaten in beijing with a korean girlfriend, despite explaining to the thugs that she was NOT CHINESE, but KOREAN! Some fellow foreigners helped them and also got beaten just for getting involved!! (link below)
http://beijingcream.com/2015/01/arrested-local-gang-alleged-to-have-targeted-foreigners-with-bats/

3) The french guy whose chinese wife got slayed with a sword in front of him in, yet again, Beijing (There must be a lot of sexually frustrated chinese males in that place, what is wrong with that city?)
http://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2015/08/13/woman-stabbed-outside-uniqlo-sanlitun

4) Not be totally beijing-centric, the foreigner who got killed in fuzhou by a gangster who could not handle seeing his lotus blossom having took a photo with a african.....cry me a river!!!!
https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/28ctk2/foreigner_stabbed_to_death_outside_fuzhou/

5)Then there was the German man who was killed for the crime of eating hotpot with a chinese woman in Shanghai, whether he had "relations" with her, we shall never know, but he was still some mothers son.(again a knife, what is it with chinese guys and going nuts with knives/swords/cleavers?)
http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2013/12/german-man-stabbed-to-death-by-a-jealous-husband/

6) I was in Shenzhen, when a mental patient grabbed a meat cleaver and went on a rampage, saw it on SZTV news with my own eyes and listened to it in cantonese/mandarin according to which station it was on, seeing the mandarin report was enough! Gruesome!
http://en.cncurrent.com/shenzhen-stabbing-spree-captured-on-film/

There are many more examples, all verifiable, and those five are just related to foreigners and chinese women. The sixth one is not, but it still made me afraid to walk around in Shenzhen in the daytime when it happened, I stayed inside the hotel room after that.

So yes, you may get beheaded for brewing alcohol (which is a crime!) in Saudi arabia, but I would wager walking about downtown riyadh at night is FAR safer than walking around beijing or shenzhen, given that the punishments to murderers/nutters are more severe, possibly the same in Singapore also. Nutters who can snap and grab a meat cleaver when they should be in a mental hospital and not left to roam about the streets and live with relatives, esp those who have a grievance against foreigners with chinese girlfriends/wives. But given china does not have the best record with regards to mental health, or the treatment of it, I doubt much will change. I think there is more danger being a white guy in a big chinese city, than there is teaching in the middle east....but that is just me, as another poster, says each to their own, opinions, we can all have them, and it does not mean it is PERSONAL, merely difference of opinions!

Out of here for now, stuff to do.

DH