Topic: Border Runs - Onward Tickets Needed

[Thai Me Up]

fortuneguy,
I like your optimism.  Since you have a company that owns property in Thailand, you have your ear closer to the ground than I do on what all these new visa regs really mean.  But trying to close the property ownership loophole to rid Pattaya of the Russian "mafia" is like trying to get rid of genital herpes with tiger balm and a prayer.  I grew up around Brighton Beach (that's Brooklyn, not Jolly Ol') and I know how tenacious certain "undesirables" can be.

I"m looking into China now.  I'm a professional English teacher (BA English, started teaching in 1978).  I've heard that some Chinese schools pay a salary and include airfare and an accommodation, and I like the idea of being recruited.  You suggest that Thailand is experiencing a backlash against progress now.  I can understand that, but I don't have to accept it.  Employment is a two-way street - it has to be.  I think that the drop in salaries and increase in B.Ed plus CELTA plus more visa regs show that Thais don't really care if native speakers work in Thailand or not.  Thai teachers know English better than we do, so they'll teach English if enough farang don't magically appear when school begins.

[fortuneguy]

I certainly know 1 teacher who is enjoying himself in China. Quite apart from the things you have mentioned, he also cites that it is easier to make genuine friendships - I imagine most people know where I'm coming from.  I've also heard Vietnam is a good gig, although that really is hearsay as I don't know the first thing about the place.

I agree with TMU about Thailand being a bad place to start your teaching career. I had a good grounding in the UK and had to do it the way I'd been taught. It improved my grammar no end. A couple of years out here and all that's out the window, along with the CELTA theory.  I think I've only done 3 or 4 truly challenging lessons. Don't get me wrong it's nice to be a thought of as a celeb. and I really hammed it up, but as a teacher I need to feel 'authentic'.

[Thai Me Up]

fortuneguy,
I understand the celebrity comment.  But you are spot on when you question Thailand as an "authentic" teaching experience.  Given the ridiculous standard that meeting 50 students once a week for 45 minutes constitutes language instruction, I'd say sometimes I felt like I was part of a charade at my first govt school.  Not so when I taught in an English Program at my second school.  But I felt great teaching at both places.

Since you mentioned Vietnam, I'd like to comment.  I spent a week in Saigon assessing the city as a place to live and work.  I'd NEVER go there again.  Apart from being offered a salary that excluded my 10 years' English teaching experience in the US, the city is completely unlivable for me.  Western food is unbelievably expensive and the main form of entertainment in Saigon is driving around the city on a motorbike honking one's horn.  Panhandlers are relentless and overly aggressive.  At night, I was followed on the SIDEWALK by ugly prositutes riding motorbikes who offered me "massage."  Ignoring them and/or saying no did not stop them from continuing their obnoxious sales pitch.  The language school where I interviewed couldn't be bothered to assist me in finding housing or even introducing me to other teachers they employed, even though I had SPECIFICALLY made a special trip to Vietnam to interview there.  To summarize Saigon, in the words of the immortal Betty Davis, "What a dump!"

[fortuneguy]

Although I don't like rival websites, they do provide some insight as to what is going on, once you've become immune to much of the tripe and fairy tales that are also posted.

It seems that visa run problems have been confined to Poipet and to a lesser extent Ban Laem. One guy reported circumnavigating the whole deal by travelling to Phnom Phen.  He received the expected tourist visa but also got a terse instruction printed in red in his passport not to do same again. How the hell can that be justified?

Others have gone to Penang and the border at Burma and had no problems.

[hero]

Pretty sure that Pnom Penh have always been bad at dishing out any kinds of visa.  Thet just don't like doing it full stop.  A former colleague of mine flew there a few years back for a non-Imm B (when they were relatively east to get) and they refused without explanation and didn't even give him a tourist visa!

He left Pnom Penh and presented the same papers in Singapore and got his non-Imm B without hiccup!

[fortuneguy]

Sounds like one of those dirt bag 'jobs worth' consulates, that has forgotten what its basic functions are, let alone the rules it should use to do them.

My friend went there 2 months ago and didn't have a problem, although he is a newcomer to Thailand and doesn't have a history in his passport.

Yet it's in the nature of these places that one thing should happen one day, and another the next.

Incidentally, check out www.pattayapeople.com crime news. Bet you won't be able to stop reading.