Unfortunately much of asia is very backwards and uneducated in matters of language, culture and multi-culturalism etc... So for them not speaking English is not a problem or reason not to be an English teacher.
It is more important that you be the national race and speak the students native language than the target language.
Thus, to cover themselves, and pretend some legitimacy to their basically fraudulent language education system they hire foreigners to stand at post and be dragged around and shopped around a random assortment of teachers (I 'serve' 4 teachers, about 2.5 of whom speak English) like a show and tell animal for a zoologist etc.....
I digress...so we kill our downtime in the office with videogames in some cases.
For the guys that live in their hotel room etc... I imagine that these are really just pathetic people ,but more likely they are poor. Asia can be really expensive. Really expensive.
I went out with my buddy in the states like 3 times when I was there last summer, for 4 or 5 hours each time. We went out for 3 hours in Japan and spent as much as we did in 3 nights out in the states.
and stuff.
I know the "circus" quite a bit as my ex girlfriend was a native Chinese, graduate (linguistics and english language) teacher with more than pathetic english skills.
For the guy I mentioned: I guess, he was just ignorant and culturally unaware - his sister did an internship at the US embassy or consulate - the financial background was more than solid, as the father was some important politican. And I never experienced China to be that expensive compared to Europe.
There are always exceptions like London or Hong Kong, maybe Japan in general (never been there).
Größter Knecht aller Zeiten aka His Excellency aka President for Life aka Field Marshal Al Hadji aka Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas aka aka Conqueror of the Buzzerbeater Empire in Europe in General and Austria in Particular