Cambodia / Vietnam - the price of a beer in an urban bar about 60cents.
Thailand - the price of a beer in an urban bar $2+.
Cambodia / Vietnam - usual teaching salary for reasonably well-qualified applicants $25,000 upwards.
Thailand - usual teaching salary for reasonably well-qualified applicants $18,000 or less.
Of course, there's more to the equation that the correlation between beer prices and salary, but it's a good starting point. In the provinces, it seems teaching rates in Thailand have hardly increased since I was there 10 years ago - but the cost of living must have more than doubled.
Add to that the far more professional approach to EFL teaching and learning in Cambodian and Vietnamese schools - and the more motivated students and smaller class sizes - and I'm at a loss to understand why anyone (other than those with kids or unavoidable commitments in Thailand) would stay, when they could do so much better in culturally similar kind of societies where all the little Asian attractions are also freely available.
If the disparity between Thailand pay rates and living costs and those of similar countries continues, is Thailand in danger running out of native speaking TEFLers altogether?
Last edited by banjo; 14th September 2012 at 18:18. Reason: adding random punctuation
I doubt it. You would think so, on the figures you've quoted, but there's always a new set of backpackers and travellers who've just 'discovered' Thailand and decide to stay on for the 'cool' lifestyle - and TEFLing is one of the very few things they can do to get any money while they're in the country.Originally Posted by banjo
My fridge is still half-full.
Take me down to the paranormal city where the girls are green and they have three titties...
Oh, won't you please take me home?
Maybe it works the other way round.
Maybe the reason the wages stay low is because there is still a strong supply of teachers who want to work here.
Never, and I do mean this, underestimate the lure of pussy. In my opinion it is one of the things that keep the wages low in Thailand. Folks will always come here for the pussy. This tends to give some Thais the perception that they can keep wages low because they will always put bums on seats, so to speak. I don't see this changing any time soon.
I know pussy isn't the only reason to keep Tommy TEFLer coming in droves, but it is a large contributing factor.
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Wages are low for Tommy TEFLer because of the agencies. I don't know about Cambodia & Nam, maybe agencies don't have a foothold there. Is corruption not as rampant there? The Thais are remarkably adept at ignoring and therefore fostering corruption.
Thailand, even to some extent out here in the boonies, offers more western comforts than either Cambodia or Vietnam. You can't rule that out as a contributing factor as to why people choose to stay here versus the other two.
"While Jim is milking the Russian Boar, I'm in the shade of a Baobab tree being served a cool drink by a beautiful young indigenous girl. "
Marlin Perkins
Aloha - Aloha HARD
If anything, I think it will price itself out by having wage and salary packages that are too low.
"You can't HAVE everything. Where would you put it?"
- Stephen Wright
"Cellar Door"
Jeeeeezzzzz. Long time no see, teacherfinder. How's life?
I've never worked there - I'm just going on what I know from people who have, and from the general job adverts It seems that a lot of the outfits are western owned and run, so even if corruption is endemic in the society at large (which I'm sure it is), it doesn't really impinge on the pay and working conditions of TEFLers.
I can't imagine there'd be need to stay home spanking the monkey in Phnom Penh or Saigon.
...Thailand offers huge convenience for every sort of genital manipulation: you can hardly swing a cat without hitting a whore...
...majestically enthroned amid the vulgar herd...
Yep.
Frederick Douglass: Find out just what any people will quietly submit to
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice
and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these
will continue till they are resisted with either
words or blows, or with both.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn;
“Don’t believe them, don’t fear them, don’t ask
anything of them.”
optimist! mine's half empty.
as if there's a whore shortage in Cambodia... but is there a Makro in Phnom Penh? a Villa Market?
Imodium can't stop me.
...there's a Makro massage parlor in Phnom Penh and a Happy Ending Villa in HCM City, I'm sure...
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