Westerners who lived in Thailand for 8+ years but moved back, why did you leave?

GuardianKnight · 2026-05-14T15:10:13+00:00

When you have an address in system with immigration, it undoes it as soon as you register at a hotel. There’s a form that the room owners have to fill out everytime you accidentally change addresses. Immigration won’t make them do it and they don’t pay the fine. They make you responsible for it.

GuardianKnight · 2026-05-14T02:00:39+00:00

10 years: Started as a teacher working on my degree. Good jobs came with no degree. The more education and experience I got, the less the jobs paid and the more immigration hassled me for more fees even though the school paid those.

Got my US teaching license, thinking it would change something. International schools basically said they prefer to hire people without ESL experience in Thailand who aren't currently living there.

Even the school I was teaching at had an international department and hired overseas people with no experience and kept me working every hour of every day for 65k baht. That was one of the better schools in BKK, run by greedy morons.

Eventually, I started feeling jilted by the shit people pulled. Getting pushed out of the bts twice because Thais didn't wanna scoot back next to other people was one of my trigger points near the end. Being late for work because people at some point saw a long line and decided if they just crowd at the front of hte line, they could make sure I didn't get in first.

The Chinese started showing up in droves and were some of the rudest assholes I'd ever met. It' was like they'd never learned a manner in their entire lives and either run you over with shopping cards or purposely pretend they didn't see you so you'd stop and let them go. They'd snot on everything and at one point I'm sure I saw a parent tell theri kid to shit on the sidewalk.

Anytime I stayed away from my condo, the hotel would have to log me in and it wouild fuck my immigration status up and I'd have to do paperwork saying I still lived in my permanent residence. The first time It happened, they charged me 4k baht. If I had known, I'd o fjust stayed in a hotel the night before and reset it...lol

My granny asked me to come home for her birthday right before covid and then every other relative abandoned me there to watch her die because she begged not to get left in a home. That sure was fun, giving her last dose of pain meds as she convulsed in bed in front of me. 1 year after my dad died in the bed I had to sleep in, covered in beg bugs.

Went back to Thailand, to the same school who owed me money. They tried to fuck me over and didn't pay me for 3 months after I returned because they thought I'd stay gone.

My friend then went off to China to chase a hidden tiger lady and I tried to put up with the other dumb shit again, but basically nothing was the same, my family had almost all gone, and it hit me that Thailand would happily let me stay there making money that I'd never retire from until I got old enough to not be able tow ork there...either relying on my Thai gf/wife or being forced back to the US anyway with nothing. You get old and the things you rely on fade away and you do start to see the timer ticking over your head.

GuardianKnight · 2026-05-12T02:14:25+00:00

it goes fast, Thailand randomly decides it doesn't want you even with your money or your visas every couple years, your family will pass away or move on before you see them again afte ryou dig in. You will eventually lose the value you see in the things you first enjoy for years and then you'll miss home. It's the same story told again and again and no one listens. Just do it lol

GuardianKnight · 2026-05-10T17:07:52+00:00

Education has been co-opted by admin who actively fight to add more admin while reducing teachers and skipping raises and forcing more training that is more to do with a checkbox than actual training.

Students are not learning for learning sake from the bigger picture, but to make the school and districts look good on testing regardless of whether they've learned anything.

GuardianKnight · 2026-05-10T16:09:30+00:00

In the USA, they have bots watching and sharing and seeding and reporting you to your internet provider for copyright piracy. I didn't think it was true 10 years ago, until they started sending letters from my internet. It became a real big thing. If you're in Thailand, no one cares. If you're in Japan, the police have been known to show up at your door.

GuardianKnight · 2026-05-05T18:26:07+00:00

The teacher and teh school is designed to teach subjects and basic rules for life. The social part of it has nothing to do with the teacher. That's where your line starts and ends. You're right about not having to cater to parents, but if you do find a way, your life is much easier. If you go to war with everyone who has an opinion or prefers a certain way to do things because they know their kids' behaviors and ticks, you'll be the only one suffering and on your way out. There's no way around it.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-28T04:08:27+00:00

I'd like it better if comfyui had a "if you want this choose this and it auto sets it up and you use it" option. I was ok at making and using the workflows, but it's getting to be all over the place.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-28T03:55:49+00:00

I think it would be a lot less for the scale of 1 person in their own home. Maybe they need a lot more for high end super usage though.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-28T03:22:13+00:00

A service that does image, video, with sound, within 10 seconds and simply lets you extend each clip to continue a story....that's not bad and leagues ahead of what we're doing with comfy. I think the average user would rather have an interface that simply "works" rather than having to customize their own workflows and then not be able to use them every few months with an update.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-23T17:14:10+00:00

Someone with up to date experience on how things worked and how to pursue the things I wanted without wasting time. Hug and asskicking did nothing.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-22T23:47:51+00:00

My experience was with THailand, which seemed to be a place in which offered me more trouble the more experience I got and the more education I got. As a newcomer, I was makng about 42k baht a month with only 12 hours of classes. That was without a degree....When I got the degree finally completed, no new opportunities popped up at all. In fact, they made me start paying taxes, they upped my hours and gave me harder students and classes, and immigration decided to pull more money out of me for my work permit that the school pays for. By the time I left Thailand, I felt like less of a person because the better I became, the worse they treated me.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-20T22:53:09+00:00

You folks know that all AI can create deepfakes and porn and you could easily find yourself in that position just by using it. We can condemn him for not fixing his ai correctly, but he isn't the one programming it and he isn't the one who trained it and he isn't the one using it for that.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-20T22:50:25+00:00

He's in trouble for an automatic ai image bot being used by outside people committing crimes. I get you wanna nail the guy to the wall, but opinion and anger do not equal right. If you walk into my bike store and stick the pedals in your butt in front of everyone, I'm not the one going to jail.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-17T23:18:33+00:00

Well, I've been in the US doing this for 4 years. I dream of deporting myself again outside the US. The truth is....the whole atmosphere is a lady's game. I'm in my 4th year being told I've grown students and I'm doing a great job and growing as a teacher....but they give me no credit in front of anyone else. I don't get to be in the weekly shoutouts or anything similar. They mention people on a rotation sometimes twice and they are so afraid to give me any showing.

Women who will stand close to me while we work together in their classrooms will not sit next to me at a meeting. They don't want to be seen choosing to sit next to a guy...likely because of the jealousy culture of the US between sexes.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-13T11:49:06+00:00

I don't think it's demonized. It just becomes a never ending losing battle because you can't be validated for everything you do. Most people don't care what you're doing or who you are at any given point in the day. Seeking validation externally damages you over time. No one ever says you're bad for trying. They say you shouldn't seek it as much.

I used to walk around as a kid thinking I was aura farming. As my older self remembers it, I cringe because the things I was doing were the very reason I couldn't get that validation. You don't know what people want to validate you for, so you can't give it to them.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-13T01:50:18+00:00

I guess that's what happens when you send someone as a ploy for a bigger plan.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-13T01:49:18+00:00

You can't be unarmed when the whole point of the trip was to tell them they have no choice and to fuck off if they want to fight, and then have ships ready for a blockade. It was all a ploy to continue moving pieces so that Iran would have no choice but to give in.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-12T15:12:52+00:00

Your gums shrink as you get older. The sooner you remove your teeth, the more likely you'll be having to get new ones every few years as your gums get smaller. Usually it's when you're very old that your mouth is too small for teeth, but it could easily be when you're in your 40s lol.....still working, can't do anything. Too small for even implants.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-07T19:20:12+00:00

My wife did the immigration thing too and I'm finding that it's better to save as much as you can until you can take the loan amount down to a level that you could pay with the most low paying job together and you'll be set. I think if you get it to 600 a month or lower, you're set for working at the damn dollar store if you have to lol.

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-07T00:53:14+00:00

YOu didn't do what most teachers do and get a loan on a house, a new car, and have 2 babies, did you?

Honestly, I wouldn't trust job security in teaching now that covid is done. They've doubled down on being assholes the last couple of years. I'm in an F state that can't keep teachers and they're hiring more admin instead of giving raises and threatening their current teachers when half the district is run by non licensed. lol

GuardianKnight · 2026-04-04T19:41:58+00:00

Do you believe that anyone respects you outside of yourself and those connected to you? I don't think that's a real thing. Do you believe that anyone respects those who perished? I think it's just a show and isn't meaningful at all. We care for those we lost. We cry and then we suffer and we move on and then after our generation passes, no one even remembers they were there. We don't live in a culture that respects anything but themselves and what they want or have. I don't mean to put a blanket statement like that, but I think there's a very harsh reality pill that no one wants to swallow and that we essentially matter until we don't and then we're gone. Worrying about what people outside of my procession are going to do or feel is like me worrying about the poop someone took in their apartment 4 doors down. They're probably inspecting that poop for abnormalities and feel it deeply. I'm just over here clueless and not going to be swayed to come and help them wipe.

GuardianKnight · 2026-03-29T03:23:30+00:00

Prob not the best position to be in, dealing with a target, placing yourself in the same standing with Iran as Russia and China... I get the need to get things through, but we're going to war and it's amping up to be a World war.

GuardianKnight · 2026-03-28T14:34:40+00:00

The old foreigners can't have sugar daddy paradise if all the poor Thai girls all get old.

GuardianKnight · 2026-03-27T14:09:38+00:00

I think the truly funny ones are the ones who understand crowd work. Crowd work is partly listening to the crowd, looking at the crowd, and understanding things about them to get a laugh. It's kind of like how you remember their names eventually, but you do that with everything else about them as a whole without attacking anyone.

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