I've been offered a great job in China paying twice my current salary in Thailand (close to 100k per month). I've still got to work for a fair few months yet, but I can't wait to leave.

The agent I have here in Thailand is a slave driver who likes to get his staff in on weekends for free. This is simply to make him look good with the owners in my opinon. It's supposedly all about 'personal development', but that is total BS. He's taking a shed load of cash off each employee, of course.

Funniest moment was him sending a message from his latest model iPhone to everyone in our Facebook group about 'being happy with what you have and that money and possessions aren't everything' or suchlike. This was probably aimed mainly at the enslaved Pinoy teachers (on around 15k a month before tax) and he typed it from his five million baht Range Rover lol (I got the message just as I passed his car in the car park). I bet he never thought about the irony involved right there.

Now he's on thin ice as there are only four native English speaking teachers left out of an original twenty or so. The staff-room now looks like a downtown Manila coffee shop. The Thais love all that bowing and scraping and the fact that they never say 'no' and will work for peanuts.

Decent native English speaking teachers with any self- respect left should be planning their escapes from this place asap. I've decided that Thailand is a lovely place for a holiday, but a crappy one to work in.

Yep. Greedy agents (most of whom will soon be gone from the Thai education industry) and an education system behind the times (with too much grovelling involved nowadays) has done for many of us, it seems.

Nigel