I am Canadian born and educated with an Indian background. Despite the fact that I have two degrees (one of which is in English), have a TEFL/TESOL certificate, and have over a year’s worth of experience teaching in four different countries, I cannot find a job in Thailand, and have spent two months, sending out over 60 applications.

I stopped attaching my picture to my applications and instantly started receiving more responses. However, in every case, when they inevitably asked for a picture, I was not contacted again, or told that there was no work - by the same organizations that had just posted messages saying they needed teachers…???

In one of the only interviews I’ve had, the woman interviewing me told me that I have an Indian accent, despite the fact that I have never lived in India, and was born, grew up and educated in Canada!?

Is there a bias towards non-white English teachers in Thailand? Without a doubt, YES!!! I even know of a few Germans, who are obviously not native speakers and who obviously do not have TEFL/TESOL certificates, but have received teaching jobs quite easily.

It is quite obvious that Thailand does not care about the quality of education in this country and is only concerned with bringing as many white people in as possible. Actually, this surprises me very little since I have traveled through Thailand many times and have noticed that in almost everything, Thai people always favour whites and will do anything to look, act, think as white as possible.

Spectre