Short of emigrating or marrying a native, working abroad is the best wayof experiencing a foreign culture from the inside. The plucky Briton who spends a few months on a Queensland cattle station will have a different tale to tell about Australia from the one who serves behind the bar in a Sydney pub. Yet both will experience the exhilaration of doing something completely unfamiliar in an alien setting.

Working abroad is one of the means by which it is possible to stay overseas for an extended period, to have a chance to get below the surface of a foreign culture, to meet foreign people on their own terms and to gain a better perspective on your own culture and habits. The kind of job you find will determine the stratum of society in which you will mix and therefore the content of the experience. The traveller who spends a few weeks picking olives for a Cretan farmer will get a very different insight into the life and times of modern Greece from the traveller who looks after the children of a wealthy Athenian shipping magnate. And both will probably have more culturally worthwhile experiences than the traveller who settles for working at a beach café frequented only by his or her partying compatriots.

Anyone with a taste for adventure and a modicum of nerve has the potential for exploring far-flung corners of the globe on very little money. In an ideal world, it would be possible to register with an international employment agency and wait to be assigned to a glamorous job as an underwater photography model in the Caribbean, history co-ordinator for a European tour company or ski tow operator in New Zealand. But jobs abroad, like jobs at home, must be ferreted out. The internet has had an enormous impact and those prepared to surf can make their way through the deluge of information to specific job listings overseas.

Exchange organisations and agencies

At the risk of oversimplifying the range of choices, the aspiring working traveller either fixes up a definite job before leaving home or takes a gamble on finding something on the spot. There is a lot to recommend prior planning, especially to people - students taking a gap year for instance - who have never travelled abroad and who feel some trepidation at the prospect.

A range of mediating organisations and agencies (whether public or private, charitable or commercial, student or general) exist and can offer advice and practical assistance to those who wish to fix up a job before leaving home. Some accept a tiny handful of individuals who satisfy stringent requirements, others accept almost anyone who can pay the required fee. For example, various agencies arrange for large numbers of young people to spend the summer working at children's summer camps in the US, as English teachers in Eastern Europe and as volunteers on Israeli kibbutzim.

Students occupy a privileged position since a number of schemes are open only to them. Student exchange organisations can help with the nitty-gritty of arranging work abroad (see factbox): for example BUNAC (British Universities North America Club) has a choice of programmes - not all confined to students - in the US, Canada, Jamaica, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ghana and, most recently, Argentina. Council Exchanges offers working opportunities in the US, Japan, Korea, China and Australia, including some for people pursuing specific careers. Lesser-known organisations can arrange short- term jobs on Latvian or Polish summer camps, Norwegian or Swiss farms, French or Italian archaeological digs, in Maltese youth hostels and Nepalese villages.

It would be wrong, of course, to assume that the love (or shortage) of money is at the root of all decisions to work abroad. Paid work in developing nations is rarely available outside mainstream aid agencies, such as VSO, which require specific training and skills and (in most cases) a two-year commitment. Yet many world travellers arrange to live for next to nothing while doing something positive for a local community. For example, enterprising working travellers have participated in interesting projects that range from helping a local native settlement to build a community centre in Arctic Canada to working at Mother Teresa's charity in Calcutta. Almost without exception, volunteers must be self-funding. For anyone with a green conscience, numerous conservation organisations throughout the world welcome volunteers for short or long periods who want to plant trees, count endangered birds and carry out research on coral reefs; again, volunteers must be prepared to pay for the privilege of helping.

Seasonal work

Most itinerant job-seekers will have to depend on the two industries that survive on seasonal labour: tourism and agriculture. Campsite operators, hoteliers and catering managers from Cannes to Cape Town depend on a temporary workforce. Anyone with some home-town restaurant experience and possibly an acquaintance with a second language is well placed to fix up a job ahead of time by sending a mass of speculative letters to winter and summer tour operators or to the hotels and campsites listed in tourist guides.

Farmers throughout the developed world are unable to bring in their harvests without assistance from outside their local community and often reward their itinerant labour force well. Finding out where harvesting jobs can be found is a matter of asking around and being in the right place at the right time. The organic farming movement is a useful source of agricultural contacts. The national co-ordinating bodies go by the name of WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), and the organisation now has affiliates in such places as Hungary and Togo as well as Europe, North America and the Antipodes. For a modest joining fee, WWOOF will send lists of organic growers offering free room and board in exchange for helping them to minimise the use of chemicals.

The other major fields of temporary overseas employment are English teaching (see separate essay) and au pairing. Even the Louise Woodward case could not undermine the popularity of au pairing among young Europeans keen to escape Basingstoke or Bremen for up to a year. Au pair agencies abound in the Home Counties and, increasingly, outside London. Their job is to match vaguely domesticated young women (and a handful of men) with families on the continent or the USA, normally for the maximum allowed fee of £47.50.

The more unusual and interesting the job, the more competition it will attract. For example, it is to be assumed that only a small percentage of applicants for advertised jobs actually get the chance to work as history co-ordinators for a European tour company, assistants at a museum bookshop in Paris or underwater photographic models in the Caribbean.

Advice will be freely given by expats and fellow travellers if sought. The casual-cum- seasonal job is always easier to secure on the spot. If looking for casual work on farms or trying to fix up a passage on a transatlantic yacht, for example, a visit to a village pub frequented by farmers, yachties or the local expatriate community is usually worth dozens of speculative applications from home.

Less-structured possibilities abound. Enterprising travellers have managed to earn money by doing a bizarre range of odd-jobs, from selling home-made peanut butter to American tourists or busking on the bagpipes, to doing Tarot readings on a Mediterranean ferry or becoming film extras in Cairo or Bombay.

Red tape

Every country in the world has immigration policies that are job-protection schemes for their own nationals. The European Union is meant to have done away with all that, though red tape snags persist for those who want to work for more than three months. Outside the 15 member nations, work authorisations become decidedly tricky, unless you participate in a government-sponsored scheme such as the Japan Exchange & Teaching (JET) programme or the Swiss Hotels Association's summer placement scheme for EU students, or unless you qualify for special schemes, such as the recently expanded New Zealand working holiday visa for bona fide travellers aged 18 to 30.

Apart from these specific programmes, the job-seeker from overseas must find an employer willing to apply to the immigration authorities on his or her behalf well in advance of the job's starting date, while they are still in their home country. This is easier for high-ranking nuclear physicists and pop stars than for mere mortals, though there are exceptions, especially in the field of English teaching. Bureaucratic difficulties do make participation in an organised exchange programme appealing, as the red tape is taken care of by the sponsoring organisation.

Planning in advance

Anyone contemplating a stint of serious travelling funded by jobs en route can take some practical steps in the months before departure to prepare for such a trip. In addition to the obvious ones, such as working overtime to save money and investigating visa regulations, you can enhance your employability by collecting together potentially useful documents (character or job references, copies of a short CV, first aid certificate, diplomas in sailing, cooking, computing) or even by doing a course (language, TEFL). And don't forget to pack a smart outfit for interviews.

As in any job hunt, contacts are often the key to success. It is always worth broadcasting your intentions to third cousins, pen friends left over from when you were 12 and visiting Oriental professors in case they divulge the details of potentially useful contacts.

Some travellers have their future career prospects in view when they go abroad, for example to teach English as a foreign language, to work on an English-language newspaper or for a marketing company. This is easier for people with acknowledged qualifications who can seek information from the professional body or journals in their field of expertise. The internet is a particularly worthwhile tool in this case.

Whether you set off to work abroad with the help of a mediating organisation or with the intention of living by your wits, you are bound to experience the usual rewards of travelling, encountering interesting characters and lifestyles, collecting a wealth of anecdotes, increasing your self-reliance, feeling that you have achieved something. Setbacks are inevitable, but it is amazing how often a setback leads to a success once you are on the track.

True 'working holidays' are rare, though they do exist. For example, travellers have exchanged their labour for a free trip with an outback Australian camping tour operator or on a cruise to the midnight sun. But in most cases, the expression 'working holiday' is an oxymoron in the same way as 'cruel kindness'. Jobs are jobs wherever you do them. There is seldom scope for swanning around art galleries, cafés and clubs if you are picking grapes seven days a week or teaching English on a Saudi oil base. Sometimes the most distasteful jobs of all are the ones that allow you to save quickly to finance the next leg of your journey.

Those who have shed their unrealistic expectations are normally exhilarated by the novelty and challenge of working abroad. Any individual with guts and gusto, whether a student or a grandmother, has the potential for funding him or herself to various corners of the globe. Persistence, optimism and resilience are the only ingredients essential for such a venture.