By Burmese Lady
We have been trying to widen our experiences and viewpoints through this trip and one example of this was a recent and rather eye-opening incident in Thailand. The area that we were staying in Kanchanaburi is quite close to the Burmese border. As a result, there are many Burmese refugees and illegal immigrants in this area. We were made painfully aware of the plight of poor and illegal immigrants by an encounter at our hotel. We had been staying here for 5 days and every day, there was a nice lady who took our breakfast order and cooked us eggs and toast. She was very friendly and hard working and we'd grown to like her over the course of our stay. The day we were leaving, there was a group checking out and due to a mix up, they paid for just two nights when they had actually stayed for 3 nights. The Burmese lady realised this only after they had left. The consequence of this was that she was told she would have to make up the difference of 1000 baht (about 55 baht to the £, so about £18). She was really upset and when we enquired as to what the problem was, she burst into tears. After a while we discovered that she was paid just 100 baht a day (less than £2) so having to pay back nearly £20 was a devastating amount of money. As an illegal worker, she is not in a position to argue. She is paid a pittance, works hard and does a good job for much less than they would pay a local person (there is a minimum wage in Thailand). Her plight really made us understand the poverty trap of immigrants, not just here but worldwide.
So that's it for now, we're off to bed. Weathers been a bit patchy here the last couple of days but nice weather forecast for the rest of the week. Hopefully we'll get out and have some fun!
Love to all
We have been trying to widen our experiences and viewpoints through this trip and one example of this was a recent and rather eye-opening incident in Thailand. The area that we were staying in Kanchanaburi is quite close to the Burmese border. As a result, there are many Burmese refugees and illegal immigrants in this area. We were made painfully aware of the plight of poor and illegal immigrants by an encounter at our hotel. We had been staying here for 5 days and every day, there was a nice lady who took our breakfast order and cooked us eggs and toast. She was very friendly and hard working and we'd grown to like her over the course of our stay. The day we were leaving, there was a group checking out and due to a mix up, they paid for just two nights when they had actually stayed for 3 nights. The Burmese lady realised this only after they had left. The consequence of this was that she was told she would have to make up the difference of 1000 baht (about 55 baht to the £, so about £18). She was really upset and when we enquired as to what the problem was, she burst into tears. After a while we discovered that she was paid just 100 baht a day (less than £2) so having to pay back nearly £20 was a devastating amount of money. As an illegal worker, she is not in a position to argue. She is paid a pittance, works hard and does a good job for much less than they would pay a local person (there is a minimum wage in Thailand). Her plight really made us understand the poverty trap of immigrants, not just here but worldwide.
So that's it for now, we're off to bed. Weathers been a bit patchy here the last couple of days but nice weather forecast for the rest of the week. Hopefully we'll get out and have some fun!
Love to all
This is another sad story of endless exploited Burmese workers. I've been living in Thailand many years and it is the norm here. I work for an NGO called AFECT which assists Burmese refugees in Mae Sai and we are just about to start building a school for 95 refugee children
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