A friend told me that last month he saw Westerners being arrested at Ranong immigration for not having a work permit for working as volunteers in Khao Lak post tsunami region. Has anyone heard anything about this?

Also, personally I saw that last time I was in Burma at Kawthaung, there was dreadful fighting amongst the guys who try to seel you cigarettes etc. Any other views on this?

Seonai

Sadly, good intentions or not, people working in reconstructing places like Ko Lak and Phi Phi are breaking Thai employment law. Its not as though Thailand has a shortage of manual labour.

I saw a brief piece on TV tonight (BBC) about volunteers rebuilding Phi Phi. All seemed a bit rummy to me. Who asked them to rebuild? Who are they actually working for? They all seemed to have a 'we're saving the poor third world mannnnn' smugness about them which left a bit of a nasty taste as charity for self gratification is all too easy when they have Vodka Buckets and lots of crumpet handy! Charity with prestige I'm afraid and all rather useless!

Its a sceptical outlook maybe but I haven't seen queues of backpackers lining up to help in Isaan with the rice harvest or building roads in Cambodia etc.

Sadly, good intentions or not, people working in reconstructing places like Ko Lak and Phi Phi are breaking Thai employment law. Its not as though Thailand has a shortage of manual labour.

I saw a brief piece on TV tonight (BBC) about volunteers rebuilding Phi Phi. All seemed a bit rummy to me. Who asked them to rebuild? Who are they actually working for? They all seemed to have a 'we're saving the poor third world mannnnn' smugness about them which left a bit of a nasty taste as charity for self gratification is all too easy when they have Vodka Buckets and lots of crumpet handy! Charity with prestige I'm afraid and all rather useless!

Its a sceptical outlook maybe but I haven't seen queues of backpackers lining up to help in Isaan with the rice harvest or building roads in Cambodia etc.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

According to Penelope in a previous post, these people are stupid and Lazy.

I don't believe that anyone has been arrested for helping clean up after the tsunami. Your 'friend' may have misunderstood what was really was going on, or perhaps just heard some rumor and was passing it along. Here, I'll show you how it works....say we're both travelling and I say to you, "I heard from a friend that absolutely no one was arrested for working without work permits in the tsunami clean up inspite of the fact that it actually is against the law to work without a work permit and in order to be legal those tsunami volunteers should have had work permits." Now you can go talk to someone else and say, "A friend of mine said........." And then another rumor gets started. Confused?....yeah, rumors can be sort of confusing.