6 March
Today, I got up early and went to teach Nong Luke at Thong Lor. I spent a pleasant hour playing educational games with him and then he wanted to play NitroStreet Racing on my mobile phone. While he was battling it out with other illegal racers on a virtual Tokyo highway, I went downstairs to use the toilet. When I came out, his mother handed me six hundred baht.
“Thank you very much but I only taught one hour today,” I said.
She looked surprised and glanced at her watch.
“Oh, more than one and an half hour, Mr Ben!” she protested.
“No, just one hour. But Luke wanted to play a game on my mobile phone afterwards so I let him.” And I tried to hand back two hundred baht.
She laughed at my honesty. “Oh ok no problem! You keep it! Thank you very much.”
One of my students told me yesterday that her sister in law had managed to find a new maid after the last one had walked out on her. I asked how much the new maid got.
“Five thousand a month,” said my student. “She will get one day off per month.”
“Five thousand,” I said. “That’s eighty pounds in English money! And only one day off per month! What time does she start work?”
“6am.”
“And what time does she finish?”
“About 6pm. It is a big house so lots to do.”
So a Thai maid gets the equivalent of twenty pounds a week for working 12 hour days, seven days a week. It can’t be a very pleasant job either. In the Thai soaps, maids always seem to get treated very badly by their rich employers. In real life, this is often the case too.
I remember, ten years ago, standing in a social security office in England and overhearing two men in front of me saying that it wasn’t worth working for less than two hundred pounds a week. I wonder what they would have thought if they’d been here….
Today, I got up early and went to teach Nong Luke at Thong Lor. I spent a pleasant hour playing educational games with him and then he wanted to play NitroStreet Racing on my mobile phone. While he was battling it out with other illegal racers on a virtual Tokyo highway, I went downstairs to use the toilet. When I came out, his mother handed me six hundred baht.
“Thank you very much but I only taught one hour today,” I said.
She looked surprised and glanced at her watch.
“Oh, more than one and an half hour, Mr Ben!” she protested.
“No, just one hour. But Luke wanted to play a game on my mobile phone afterwards so I let him.” And I tried to hand back two hundred baht.
She laughed at my honesty. “Oh ok no problem! You keep it! Thank you very much.”
One of my students told me yesterday that her sister in law had managed to find a new maid after the last one had walked out on her. I asked how much the new maid got.
“Five thousand a month,” said my student. “She will get one day off per month.”
“Five thousand,” I said. “That’s eighty pounds in English money! And only one day off per month! What time does she start work?”
“6am.”
“And what time does she finish?”
“About 6pm. It is a big house so lots to do.”
So a Thai maid gets the equivalent of twenty pounds a week for working 12 hour days, seven days a week. It can’t be a very pleasant job either. In the Thai soaps, maids always seem to get treated very badly by their rich employers. In real life, this is often the case too.
I remember, ten years ago, standing in a social security office in England and overhearing two men in front of me saying that it wasn’t worth working for less than two hundred pounds a week. I wonder what they would have thought if they’d been here….
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