filipinos working abroad and teaching English in Thailand

Over the past few years Thailand has seen an increase in Filipino teachers coming to teach English here in los.

Now there is plenty of work to be found in Thailand for the likes of the Filipino teacher.http://tefljobsworldwide.blogspot.com/ Most of the major language companies take on a lot of Filipino workers, when they are unable to get any native speaking English teachers.

One thing that I must say about our Filipino counterparts is this... for the most part they are very hard working and dedicated to the profession. This of course puts them in favour with management when they're going for a job.

Filipino workers will also work a lot harder and longer than most native speakers, sorry guys it's true. The downside for the Filipino is of course they tend to be put on a little by the Thai management who will, for want of a better expression... exploit them!

Another big plus side for our Filipino worker is that they tend to come with a college degree, so that makes them easier to employ.

On the downside their tends to be a little bit of discrimination laid at there doors by some language institutions and schools here in Thailand.

Fortunately for them, not everyone sees things that way. A lot of schools even the big chains will quite happily hire the Filipino teacher.

Here are a few places that always tend to be on the look out for teachers and will quite happily hire the Filipino teacher.

.........................

ECC (Thailand) Big C Rajdamri
5th Floor, 97/11 Rajdamri Road, Lumpini, Patumwan, Bangkok 10330 Thailand
Tel: +66 (2) 253 3312
Fax: + 66 (2) 252 8570
Email: jobs@ecc.ac.th (job enquiries only)

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Siam computer and language institute

Tel. (66) 0-2247-2345 ext. 200, 204, 364
Fax. (66) 0-2644-6974; (66) 0-2644-6977
E-mail : bhudeb@siamcom.co.th or anthony@siamcom.co.th

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The Nonthaburi English teachers project

http://www.ril.ru.ac.th/ntp/

Esl teaching in Thailand(would I get that job?)

So you've sat at home back in farang land pondering if this is the right move for you to make!

You love Thailand so much. Your mind is dead set on coming over here and plying your trade as an English language teacher, in the tefl world!

You're now wondering, will it be easy to land a job in one of the many esl establishments over here.

So...

There are a few factors that are going to come into play when you're job seeking in Thailand.

1. Your qualifications (degree + tefl = beating them off with a rather large shitty stick)

2. Degree in any English teaching field + tefl + pgce = (You are a god so demand the world! You'll most certainly receive it on a platter with an obscene salary to follow. In comparison with what others in Thailand are earning)

3.Degree any field no teaching experience = (You'll get a job without too much effort, you'll be in demand by most schools)

4.Tefl + no degree = (Getting a job with most of the larger schools is very possible. If you've got teaching experience under your belt then that will put you in good stead too)

5.No experience + no tefl + no degree = (Proceed to the nearest canal bridge and throw yourself off it! Your chances are rather slim here. There are quite a few schools out there that will give you a start, you could check out schools like Brit am, E+ and a few others. Though you could dramatically improve your chances by getting a tefl certificate. http://tefldirectory.blogspot.com/ this will further increase the odds of you landing a job.)

So from the above I hope that you're starting to get the picture. A word of warning : You can teach in Thailand without a degree. Though to secure a work permit in most cases a degree is required. So no degree = in the majority of cases, no permit!

Working without a permit might land you in trouble with the authorities if you get yourself caught.

However having said that quite a few people still do it and have had no problems. Though one thing you should remember is this... The good old TIT rule. This is Thailand, and with that in mind things can change overnight, and crackdowns frequently happen. Whether you want to teach legally or illegally is your choice at the end of the day!

Conclusion: A degree is needed! A tefl or celta will put the icing on the cake. Anything else after that is a good bonus!

Teacher recruitment in Thailand (a nice little earner!)

There I was working away and constantly thinking to myself, this job just aint cutting it anymore financially wise!

I really need to make some extra cash and fast! So what were my options? Well I could ask the firm for more hours / extra teaching at nights + weekends. Now naturally this would be the obvious choice, but then again, I'd have to travel to the job. These evening and weekend classes were usually at far flung language centers situated throughout the city.

So after battling your way through the Bangkok traffic and then teaching your class with the return trip thrown in, you were lighter on the cash due to travel costs and had wasted a lot of time + you were knackered into the bargain! Great deal I don't think!

Second choice... teach privates. Well to tell you the truth I really didn't want to bother with those private classes and chasing my cash around, so that was out of the question.

Choice three... came to me like a bolt of inspiration from heaven! Language schools need teachers to teach their students, Yes, At the moment they're short of teachers! Yes, ok... so therefore they require them! Yes,... So why don't I give them what they want!

TEACHERS!!! YES.

With all of that in mind I decided to get into the teacher recruitment game. It was simple, I already knew most of the schools anyway. I also knew the ones that were short on the old farang teachers.

There of course were the other establishments that had a seemingly revolving door of teachers for reasons that are well known to teflers and expats alike in Thailand.

Anyway who was I to judge. The teachers who I couldn't get work for at the bigger schools I would churn them through the revolving door schools.

So I approached a few well known private language schools and left them my card with details of the service that I could offer them.

Less than a two days later I got a call on my cell phone. I had my first assignment. I was to recruit 5 native speakers to teach English at various high schools throughout the city.

So okay, I had the job, now it was up to me to fulfill my part of the deal and put some white native speaker bums on classroom chairs.

How could I go about this? Well if I advertise in the Bangkok post it would have cost me money and been too slow. I like need the teachers yesterday kind of thing.

So where do foreigners hang out in Bangkok? Yes, of course you'll find them in abundance on khao san road. Khao san is like a backpackers mecca for those of you who are not in the know.

I ho I ho it's off to work I go. I put my best threads on, grabbed my bag and with some printed material and a list of terms and conditions jumped in a cab and said (yaak pai thanon khao san rew rew na) I'd like to go to khao san road and step on it!

Having arrived there I came upon a bar. Gullivers I think the name was. I entered and looked around. In the corner were a group of guys sitting down. I bought myself a drink and pro ceded to approach them. Trying to avoid looking like a mincer or mad axeman type :-)

I introduced myself and got talking to them. Now what a stroke of luck! These guys were on an asian backpacking tour. However this was their first time in Asia and Thailand.

They liked Thailand so much that they'd decided to stick around for a while and chill. I told them all about the jobs and they seemed happy because they'd be able to make some extra bucks thus financing their further travels.

I got their details and guest house phone number and I agreed to pick them up the following day and take them to the company. I did however brief them on dress code and pointed them the way to banglamphuu to pick up some cheap clothes.

So that was three signed and two to go. To cut a long story short they told me they knew of a couple of other guys who were staying at the same guest house and who would be interested in a job. A German and a french guy. Ok not quite native speakers but white and with a decent grasp of the lingo. I jokingly informed them if anyone asks about your accents just tell em you come from Scotland :-)

So I had all five. Next step I proceed to collect my cash. Which for me was 2,000 baht a head. So five teachers = 10,000 baht. So basically I'd had a night out at khao san road a few beers and I'd got a pay day out of it. Not a bad day at the office if I may say so!

Taxi meter drivers in Thailand

We all have to take a cab from time to time and in Thailand there are more taxis than one can shake a stick at!

Taxi drivers the world over have come in for a bit of stick and to be fair on them they're not all a bunch of robbing b*stards! However taking a trip in a Bangkok taxi can become a rather challenging affair for your average tourist or expat.

So what about the drivers themselves? Most cabis hail from the north eastern provinces of Thailand. Economic reasons tend to drive them, pardon the pun :-) to the larger cities in Thailand, namely Bangkok! Here they will usually rent a cab and take it in shifts to drive.

So what are the main things that tend to tick people off? On phrase you should remember is wing orm What does wing orm mean I hear you asking yourselves? Wing orm means to take you around the houses or take the long route around.

This tends to piss off a lot of expats, especially when an extra 50-100 baht can be added to the meter!

I remember an incident when I first came to Thailand between a cabie and a teacher friend of mine. We both shared a cab to work. When we pulled up at the school, my friend Dave passed the driver a 100 baht note. The fare came to about 95 baht or so if I can remember correctly. The taxi driver took the cash and didn't return the 5 baht change. Dave then demanded it by saying... ooy, come on 5 baht!

At the time I thought this was rather stingy, but after a few years living in Thailand and having the same trick pulled on myself, I grew weary of it in the same way as my colleague had.

Another favourite trick of our local taxi man, and this one tends to take place around the touristy areas of Bangkok is to try and negotiate a price with you instead of switching on the meter.

If any cabie tries this trick on you. Do not try and reason with them, just walk! It's called a taxi meter for a reason, it's a taxi with a meter!

Want to kill the boredom on a long journey? Then take the micky out of your new taxi guy friend with some Thai conversation...

How many hours do you work a day? = Tham ngaan wan la kii chuamong

You work hard, you must be really rich = kun tham ngaan nak maak khit waa kun ruay maak duay

I bet you live in a big house, with lots of girls = khit waa kun yuu thii baan yai gap pooying
laai kon

You are ricer than me = kun ruay gwaa pom

At home we're really poor = thaang baan raw jon maak

What to do with your free time in Thailand?

The above is a question which many an expat have pondered over. You see when you visit Thailand on a two week vacation, you'll rarely encounter this little problem.

However when you take that big step and relocate yourself to Thailand, you'll suddenly be faced with it, sooner rather than later.

One thing you could do is to go all out and just work. The slight downside with this is that you'll be missing everything that Thailand has to offer and who in their right minds wants to work 24/7? That's what most of us after all came here for, to escape the rat race! To get off of the 24/7 work like a madman treadmill!

If you walk around some places that expats live namely Pattaya, Phuket and certain areas og Bangkok, you'll no doubt stumble upon rosy cheeked expats bar owners, business owners etc sat around with beer bottles welded permanently to their hands.

A lot of expats end up on this slippery slope, the red face look is also a warning sign that all is not going to great with their insides by the way!

A lot of these people simply do this out of sheer boredom and while I'm not trying to be anybody's mother here. I'm just trying to highlight that sometimes for certain individuals having too much free time on their hands will not always be beneficial.

So what to do? Well for me having free time on my hands after a hard working week is a great opportunity to pursue other interests.

For example: Writing for websites and getting paid for it :-) Learning another language :-) Writing and having books published and receiving regular royalty payments :-) Studying for a degree via distance learning :-) Learning to program and write simple programs. Learning about ecommerce. Setting up websites and writing and updating them :-) Taking care of my girlfriend. Going out and eating at nice restaurants.

The list just goes on! The only problem I face is that time seems to be going too bloody fast!

So if you have half a brain in your head you can make the most of the time you have and exploit this great opportunity that has been given to you!

Daniel gets married in Thailand

Sometimes when the newly arrived show up in Thailand things tend to go a little to their heads as was the case with teacher Daniel.

Now give the man his dues he was really enjoying his new life in Thailand. He was certainly getting into the swing of things what with all the food and Thai beer he was consuming he really was starting to fit.

All he had to do now was become a gambler and fritter his money away and he would have completed the transition from farang to Thai guy.

What was next on Daniels agenda? Well, plainly to him it was marriage. You see he'd met his other half in.... no other than a bar! Surprise surprise. Having been together for around about two to three months, it was time to pop the big question. Get down on your hands and knees boy and beg that bird!!!! WILL YOU MARRY ME?

The answer he received was a big hearty yes of course. ("thoughts of financial stability and long lazy days spent asleep never entered into the equation, honest!")

So now the scene was set: Daniel would travel upcountry to her home and meet all the family and of course guess who was in charge of the wedding plans. Yes, no doubt you'll have figured it out, it was his other half and the family.

So the day was set and off Daniel merrily went like a lamb to the slaughter. Lol lets not be so cynical here :-)

He arrived in the village, to be greeted by the family and a couple of monks. A ceremony was then performed where he had water tossed over him by the monks and a few prayers were said. Then string was tied around his wrist another traditional thing. After that it was bobs your uncle hey presto and according to her and the family they were now married.

He came back to school the next week with all the stories, and a happy look on his face that only a married man can have Give it a few months :-)

Now, asked, did you have to pay a dowry? The answer was yes. I inquired how much? The reply I got was 10,000 baht. This was quite cheap but on the other hand it was still a large sum for folks scratching a living in the poorer northeastern provinces of Thailand.

Daniel showed us some pictures of the affair and the monks who blessed him. Tell you the truth it looked all rather stone age to me.

However the bigger shock was later to come a few months down the line. Daniel was looking through his new wifes belongings, and came across some pics of her and her family.

At the back of it he saw two lads, they looked a tadge familiar to him. So he brought them into school along with the pics of his wife the family and the recent wedding.

OMFG! the two monks and the two lads were the same, they were obviously family members maybe brothers! Except that on the family shots, they had hair and on the wedding pics they were bald as coots and dressed in monks robes!

Then it all fell into place. The monks weren't monks at all! They were her brothers or other family members posing as monks. So next question? The money? The 10,000 baht dowry?

Yes, the guys had and the family had had themselves an easy pay day! Guess what? Daniel had paid for the food and the booze as well!

Daniel felt a little sick after this and of course the wife denied everything, as usual! So a good day was had by all except for Daniel!

Teacher Daniel gets his first teaching job in Thailand

Daniel showed up in Thailand around about April 2003, he was from a small town in Yorkshire England. He was really pissed off with the U.K as most of us were, the reason we'd all ended up over here.

Daniel was a nice guy and we got on well. Though he wasn't exactly the best teacher around. To be fair on the chap, it was all new to him and he needed to get more experience under his belt in order to improve as everyone does.

So we ended up working together in the same school around about Sept 2003 - March 2004. WE had some good times and Daniel was really enjoying his new life in Thailand and he was in a way really going overboard to fit in. Yes, it could be said that he was totally enjoying his new situation.

Everything was going well for him apart from the odd blooper here and there which were so befitting to our Daniel.

For example the time when he spent the whole of his lunch brake outside in the heat of the day playing football on a hard dusty pitch with a bunch of school students. There was the other time in the classroom when he'd allowed his students M6 = 17-18 years olds to ask him what he and his other half got up to on their recent half term trip to Pattaya.

Daniel of course allowed himself to be led into a position where he showed the students what he and his other half had gotten up to. This he skillfully demonstrated by placing his two palms together and moving them up and down whilst making a grunting noise. The actions received a barrage of laughter from the boys in the class and a red faced silence from the girls. After this little incident Daniel found himself busted down to teaching M1 - M2 12 14 year olds and I ended up getting landed with his M6 classes which I wasn't really happy about.

Then a few days later a visit from the boss old Manoch who skillfully tried to explain that Thais were... how did he put it... a little conservative, and that playing football with the kids at lunchtime was not the correct way for a teacher to act. You could argue that Daniel was a likeable idiot.

Now when you work at a government school, it kinda gets a bit routine and to be fair it gets on your nerves a bit and there are so many other problems. So you try and do things to get you through the day, literally to amuse yourself when teaching. You come up with all ideas. Now the kids at this particular school were rich kids and very lazy. So one day Daniel comes bounding up to me with a smile on him like a Cheshire cat!

I said hey Daniel what's up? He told me that he'd come up with a great idea for a lesson. He'd been looking through some books in the library and come across his book sesame street which was a really annoying yank kids t.v program with lots of characters based on animals and alike.

So he printed off a few hundred copies and handed them out to his kids. Their task was to name the characters and then colour them in.

It was a great success he later informed me, it'd helped him to toss off half an hour of the lesson thus giving him plenty of opportunity to sit back and put his feet up in the class.

Later on Daniel was moved to a private school by the company and then was employed direct by that school. That was the last I ever heard or saw of the guy. Though I still reminisce over the great times, memories and just the plain nice experiences I had.

Priceless!

Travelers / backpackers earn extra cash in Bangkok!

In Bangkok for a short time? Short on cash? Need some extra spending money? Then teach for English+!

Yes, English plus has many branches in and around Bangkok. It also has branches upcountry. If you're in Thailand and have a few months free then why not give them a bell and earn some extra cash teaching English for them!

English + or elt communications as they're known are always on the lookout for new teachers to fill their never ending teacher void.

Work may include... Teaching at various government high schools in and around Bangkok. Or you could be teaching weekend and evening classes at one of their many language centers located throughout the city and provinces.


Don't be shy give them a bell today, you'll be glad you did!

ELT Communication Group
47/19 ELT Building,
Ngam Wong Wan Road,
Lat Yao,
Chatu Chak,
Bangkok 10900,
Thailand.

Alternatively, you can contact us by telephone, fax or email;


By telephone on: 02-941-3787/8
International callers dial: +66-2941 3787/8

By Fax on: 02-941-3786
International callers dial: +66-2941 3786

By Email: eltcommunication@eltcom.com

Software in Bangkok

Where would you go if you wanted a nice new copy of office xp? windows vista or any other popular program?

Well if you happen to be lucky enough to be in Bangkok, then you need look no further than the famous Panthip plaza!

Yes, for software geeks this place will be like a paradise on earth! You, can literally get just about anything you want.

Want that brand new Mac os x software. No problem 150 - 200 baht! Well better than shelling out maybe 4,000 baht or whatever it goes for these days.

How can these guys operate you might think with the likes of Microsoft banging it's big corporate hand down on the table all the time.

Well it's illegal to sell hooky software in Thailand and if the owners are caught they could face heavy fines, jail time etc.

So what about raids? This could be a big problem, people getting arrested and businesses going out of business right?

Well here is the deal...

Police ring Panthip plaza and inform stall holders of an upcoming raid on lets say Friday. Stall holders make sure they have nothing on their stalls etc. Which they normally wouldn't have due to them keeping it outside and around the corner somewhere.

When you the punter come into their shops and look at the empty software sleeves which all have assigned numbers on them. All you do is write the number down and they send a boy outside to pick up your order, 5 minutes later he's back you pay and that's that!

Anyways getting back to the raid, Police show up on the day sniff around a few stalls / shops etc. Low and behold nobodies got any snide software.

Everyone is happy, police have been seen to do their jobs and off they go. A result for everyone, except probably for Bill and Steve :-)

Soi dogs of Thailand

In most western nations people tend to go a bit overboard with their beloved k9s. They tend to pamper them to death and take them for nice walks in the park whilst calling them by cute names and generally lavashing tons of affection upon their darling mutt.

Thailand tends to take a different view on dogs. For example rightly or wrongly these sad animals get thrown out onto the streets where it's up to them to fend for themselves and find whatever scraps of food there might be in bins on the street or simply by strangers giving them left over rice etc.

What happens next? These pooches tend to breed and before you know it. A large mutt community has sprung up! The dogs tend to keep their distance from people. However, you try walking down some of these sois at night or early morning on your own! The dogs will eye you up in the street growl and bark.

Before you know where you are, you'll have a pack of mangy mutts following you. The one thing you should never do is take your eye off them. If you do then one or more will creep up behind you and bite you.

Yes, it happened to me a few years back near sukhumwit road! I was just walking down the street and the next thing I knew was that something had grabbed the back of my leg. When I turned around. It was a soi dog. Luckily for me I was wearing jeans, however it had drawn blood, and I needed to get a few shots at the local hospital.

Back in the u.k for example this problem could be cleared up effectively and easily with a nice choice of options:

1.Call the local dog wardens out.

2.Buy an air rifle and have a bit of Saturday night sport from your bedroom window, with a few friends and a crate of beer.

3.Chuck some poison meat out for them. Then try to keep a straight face when the local paper and community start wondering why there are so many dog corpses littering the streets.

4.Ring the local Indian or kebab restaurant and tell them you've got some fresh meat for them.

5.If you have a stray cat problem then contact the nearest Chinese restaurant.