Living on the new wage mentality

I have to agree with the earlier post. 30K is less than 1,000 dollars a month. It is not possible to live on it anywhere in Thailand and this includes Isaan now; unless like most workers I meet: you already have retirement money from another country, do one heck of a lot of tutoring and extra work on the side, or you are very lucky.

By 'lucky' I mean you have a Thai wife that finds an apartment before they see you and contracts it in, you exchange English lessons for rent, you live close to work or a room is provided, the school you teach at actually has owners with a heart and soul (don't count on them being devout Buddhist, I promise they are all about materialism, ego/image and profits),

Thais think 30K to 35K a month is good for a foreigner but it isn't. We don't have extended families, connections, or influence.

We work under archaic conditions including xenophobia, Thai spies for the administrators, backstabbing, unsubstantiated rumours and all sorts of jealous hatreds.

We get charged foreigner prices and if you're terminated, you have 24 hours to leave the country so you lose everything and if you don't have the money to make it to the border on time you get hit with overstay.

Forget the night life. Especially if you have a family and house to take care of.

I see the schools have dropped wages, make huge demands on requirements that just cost too much to make it worth applying. And there is not a place to post warnings about bad schools and their reputation for people to see.

If a school anywhere in Thailand is serious about hiring teachers that are licensed in home country, and have a Thai license and have been teaching for many years with several in Thailand, then they need to pay at least 50k a month.

Bob


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