grtaylor

I am curious to know what people's experiences with international school teaching in Thailand has been. I teach at one in Chiang Mai and I find my job delightful. In the USA I literally left teaching due to the horrendous conditions and did other work. Moving here I did the usual teaching other kinds of schools and so know the debilitating conditions that can exist in many Thai schools..........admin nightmares, lack of work permits, low pay, huge classes. My last few years have been in direct constrast to that. I am 57 and have no age perception probelms at work. Small classes and interested students. What I consider to be pretty reasonable pay, vacations and benefits though some others, mostly directly here from western countries feel its not enough. It affords me a fairly comfortable lifestyle to the extent I have purchased a car and am buying a home strictly on local wages. I feel very fortunate. Of course there are probelms in any school and no job is heaven...........I mean thats why they pay us to do them..........but what are the experiences of others? I havent seen much in this forum on this topic and so am curious. THANKS>

I have also made the move to one of the top tier international schools and it is a whole different world. A very nice one and I echo most of what you have written. Students are attentive and interested in learning and seem to understand the importance of a good education. Salary and benefits also fall into the "whole different world" category and age is not a factor whatsoever. The only regret I have is that I did not do it sooner.

I would like to interview some of the top tier international schools in Thailand for my daughter to attend. Looking for an English language curriculum in science and math as well as a thai curriculum.... Chiang Mai, Hua Hin , or others would be

viable however not interested in BKK or Pattaya.

I also would like to know which schools are the top tier schools in Thailand and which are the best? I will relocate to the area once I decide on a school for my 3 kids. They are currently going to a bi-lingual ashool which is OK but all the other kids are Thai so their language skills are not developing adequitely. I know they are expensive.

Where are you living now?

I expect the content of the courses is demanding, but because of the "no-one fails" system which I'm advised operates at all

education levels, your degree won't get much if any recognition I think.

Not true - I did the Graduate Diploma in Education at Assumption University, and quite a number of people on the course failed . . . . .

G

My international school requires a degree (minimum BA, BSc or BEd) + national certification + a minimum of two years experience in a "real" school, i.e. not a language school. ESL teachers, in addition, are required to have an ESL qualification.

Basically, you need to have the qualifications which would allow you to teach in your home country. State Certification for the USA, PGCE for England, etc., etc.

G

What about getting the raillink to the airport, not the BTS!

I wish you good luck, taxi for you!

Err, most of us will have to get the BTS in order to get to the airport rail-link . . . . .

Glad to hear you guys have had good experiences there at Bumrungrad.... If you had a particularly good experience, you ought to mention the doctor(s) involved and their specialty....since who you get/have as your treating physician/surgeon makes a world of difference between good and bad....

Totally agree, here's my ten baht's worth:

Dr. Arram, Cardiologist - he was not my preferred choice at the outset but as I got to know some people at Bumrungrad I found out that the OR Nurses all reckon he is the one they trust, recommend and would use if they needed cardiac work performed. Can't get much better than that in my book.

Dr. Viroj Chodchoy, Urologist - I did not choose him, as I arrived at the hospital without an appointment. Luck was on my side, most definitely! Much the same as above, all the other staff have the utmost respect for him. I have other friends who have been his patients, and all speak equally highly of him.

One morning I woke up unable to move without extreme agony,muscle spasms, and my legs were practically numb went to Bangkok Pattaya and the doctors said I had a back strain due to my deformed spine and to simply rest, three days later woke up in the middle of the night in extreme agony, muscle spasms and decided to go to Pattaya International spent three nights there simply taking painkillers. Both times sent home in an ambulance as neither knew what to do, had the same spinal x-rays at both. And the amount of problems we had with the cashier's there and payment too much to go in to just now.

Then decided to go to Bumrungrad, had them send me an ambulance to Pattaya cashier told me not to worry about payment as my case was emergency they will come and see me later on.Anyways, within the following 24 hours they found out I had multiple fractures in my spine, long story short yes it was expensive(however the daily room cost was less than both the Pattaya hospitals)but I was diagnosed quickly and all my doctors spoke fluent English and I am now fully recovered. I now make monthly trips to see their rheumatologist and eye specialists.

For me I would not consider anywhere else now.

A friend of mine went to Bangkok-Pattaya with a "sore" patch on his face, above his cheek. The doctor there diagnosed it as a insect bite, and gave him some cream for it. He was not happy about this, so eventually decided to go to Bumrungrad, and get a second opinion. It turned out, after a biopsy, to be skin cancer . . . . . He won't go back to Bangkok-Pattaya again.

I have been treated at BIH over the last 2 years for superficial cancer of the bladder, and could not have had better care or treatment anywhere. However, its not cheap (by Thai standards), but fortunately the insurance is paying.

G

Get a new UK passport here and you will have no problem.

If you get a new passport issued in Bangkok (FOC), then the pages with valid visas and stamps will be folded in and the whole top right corner then cut off the passport. Those folded in pages are intact and thus still valid.

You can then go to the immigration dept who issued the extension and get both the stamp and extension transfered to your new passport.

Don't know what they do in the UK if you still have valid visa(s)/re-entry permit(s) in a passport that is replaced.

Exactly my point.

G

At about 4 PM today on Silom Soi 4 the former Roxy Club, Icon for some and Rome club for the nostagics, has collapse. The 4 stories, front part, went down on the street. No casualties, thank God.

Luckily it was in the afternoon otherwise it would have been a lot worse had it happen in the evening.

The electric supply has been cut off on that side of the Soi from Balcony to Noriega.

The sustaining wall between Roxy and Balcony has been severly dammaged.

Both venues are out of bound until the structural engineers have evaluated the security factors.

Former Roxy was undergoing renovations at the time.

is this anywhere near convent rd?

Soi 4 is the opposite side of Silom, almost directly opposite Convent.

G

BBC Model B Micro - 32Kb of RAM, and a cassette recorder for your programs. This was when the DoE gave a free computer to every school in the UK! It was sometime in the mid-80s, before 1987, but not sure of the exact year.

G

I have a 1 year extension that expires on the same day as my passport next May.

I am due to go back to the UK for a few weeks soon so would there be any problems if I got a new passport whilst there and arrived back in Thailand with it plus my old invalid book which has my visa in it.

Would they transfer the visa at the airport or ask me to go to Suan Plu and get it done or worse give me a hard time about haw long they would let me stay.

The alternative is to get a new book here but I have been told it is better to have a book issued in your home country for some reason.

Any advice gratefully received.

My gut reaction is that you would have a real problem, because your old passport, and therefore the visa, would be invalid.

The first time I renewed my passport here, for some reason, nobody told me about visa transferal. The next time I left the country, with both passports, the immigration official told me "you have no visa for Thailand - you are here illegally." I pointed out that it was in my old passport, and he told me it was not valid as the passport had been cancelled. After quite a bit of arguing, he let me go, with a hand-written note in my new passport.

When I last renewed my passport here at the British Embassy, they were careful, in cutting the corner off the book, not to cut it off the one page with the visa, so that one particular page was still valid. I think you'd have a problem persuading the people in the UK to leave one page valid like that. I believe the transfer has to be done at Immigration, and that you now need an official letter from the embassy asking them to transfer the visa.

G

Was in Langkawi, Penang and KL in April this year, and used my (4 digit) SCB ATM card in all three places - no problem anywhere. . . . .

...

Not exactly "transit" - you have to check in to Malaysia, get passport stamped, and then check out again . . . . .

Malaysia don't stamp passport anymore :-)

Thats new then - I was there in April and got stamped in and out.

G

Provider's Name:

Service Plan (Postpay or Prepay):

Call Rate to Bangkok landline:

Billing increment:

With regard to Prepay/Postpay, you can only get a Postpay contract if you have a Work Permit in Thailand. Otherwise, you will need to get a Prepay card.

Not sure what you mean by "Billing increment".

Cheapest - Air Asia 12,577 baht round trip (leave late November - return early December - Bangkok-Kuala Lumpur-Bali) You can't beat that!!! Not the best airline, but if you get the Xpress boarding and play the rugby scrum and get the front row, it's not bad. Just line up at the gate really early.

Aloha

Totally agree with the above.

My way, done it twice, no probs.

Make sure you have a cupl of hours for transit at KL_LCC.

Good luck.

Not exactly "transit" - you have to check in to Malaysia, get passport stamped, and then check out again . . . . .

Thanks all for the responses, very interesting.

I suspect that a word like career or at least the meaning as i intepret it is relatively new in the english language. Unless you were a scholor or merchant etc people only had jobs/occupations until 100 or so years ago in the west.

From http://www.etymonline.com - seems you're right about it being a fairly recent addition:

career (n.)

c.1534, "a running course" (especially of the sun, etc., across the sky), from M.Fr. carriere "road, racecourse," from O.Prov. carriera, from V.L. *(via) cararia "carriage (road), track for wheeled vehicles," from L. carrus "chariot" (see car). Sense of "course of a working life" first attested 1803. The verb is first attested in 1594 from the notion of a horse "passing a career" on the jousting field, etc. Careerist is from 1917.

This surely is a feature of all languages, that its not a one-to-one situation in terms of translating vocabulary. How much easier life would be if it were the case, and how much more boring "language" would be.

We were actually discussing this very subject in a class at my school today: how concepts which are easy to express in one language are very difficult in another, and vice-versa. A Finnish boy in the class told us that there is no word for "please" in Finnish, and that you have to convey the concept in a completely different way.

So, to us "profession", "job", "occupation" and "career" are different, in Thai they're mainly the same.

On the other hand, we also looked at the number of words for "you" in Thai, and what this says about the language and the culture.

[For anyone who is interested, this was an International Baccalaureate TOK (Theory of Knowledge) class, in which we were discussing language as a "Way of Knowing".]

It does seem to be a requirement that you show a record of paying personal Income Tax,

not so much what company you work for.

Technically, I work for a non-profit organisation - an international school owned by a non-profit foundation. For my PR application I had to get evidence from the school of its non-profit status, as well as details of the school's licence-holder, and all the members of the foundation board.

I did, however, fulfil all the requirements for salary earned and tax paid.

Something I noticed:

"pai" also means : "to go" (same tone, this makes it confusing)

I cannot read Thai btw

As is the case with many things in Thai language, the context will make it totally obvious.

Edit: By the way - and it's been said many times before in this forum, but always worth repeating - if I had to give you one piece of advice about learning Thai, it would be to learn to read it as soon as you've mastered the very basics.

mk

I second that - it really makes much more sense when you can read it!

Its very difficult to put into words why I applied. Looking at it logically, there don't seem many benefits. I guess part of it is psychological, in a sense. I have passports with 18 years of stamps, saying "permitted to remain until . . . . . . ", and that isn't enough for me. I don't want to be just "permitted" to remain on what is always a temporary basis. I want it to be exactly what it says: "Permanent".

and what about "CHECK BIN" which seems to be a combination of the US word "check" and the British word "bill" both meaning the same thing....and by coincidence comes in a "bin".

Actually, "check" here means "inspect", as in the British English "check the bill".

Interesting, I had assumed it came from the GIs calling for the "check" as they do in the states.....where have you found this out?

Yes, I always assumed it was "check" from American English, and "bill" (which, of course, becomes "bin" in Thai) from British English. The actual Thai expression is either "gep tang" or "kit tang", I think.

Thanks guys. Found the appropriate button and have found the psuedo/split audio setup. Enjoying the Ryder Cup with it right now!

Cheers

That's too bad. Generally I like the Scots, but I do hate them for inventing a game that takes away so much good pastureland.

Have fun with it. Another thing that you may want to do is to root around in the UBC settings and see if there's an option to turn on Dolby {anything} which will improve the surround sound that your reciever has to generate and make it more 'natural'.

Don't quite get why golf sounds better in 5.1 stereo . . . . . . .

It would have improved the quality of the bread.

Don't know why, most certainly did not on Bali, or in India.

It did in Viet Nam, Cambodia, And Lao.

To the OP, sincerely sorry for your domestic misfortune....

Speaking personally, I certainly like my sports...but...it's a bit hard for me to understand....

You've just had a major dust-up with your SO and that's led to you being out of your home.... And the thing you're worrying about is where to watch sports on TV????

My thoughts exactly!

What's your experience in the hotel industry? With your experience it's not likely. Possible to get in banking selling financial services, but a lot of people on this board hate people like that. You could teach biology and science at an international school. Teaching is not restricted to just teaching English.

hmm..interesting

i worked in a hotel for a few months once a long time ago thats all.

teaching biology sounds like it could be a winner. ive never taught before though, dont you need teaching qualifications/experience to work in thailand?

To work at a reputable international school, you would need a degree in the subject (which you already have), teaching certification from your home country, and a couple of years experience of teaching in a school somewhere else.

Some schools might take you just with the degree.

Thailand has been colonized by Chinese immigrants who now completely run the country...

Oops, that is a hit!

Pardon for asking, but why is there left hand driving in Thailand?

Anybody can shed some light over that burning question for me?

Thank you

That's a very good question. Also, why do they drive on the left in Japan? or Macau? The answer is obvious for former British colonies, but none of these were.