| Visas | Is it really necessary to get a visa to work in Thailand? It depends on you. If you wand to work without any problems with registration or crossing the border, so its advisable to make your stay legal. It saves you a lot of time in the long run even though the visa process can be complicated. Your school may some of paper job while settling your stay in Thailand. But whatever your school may assist you with, it will not be enough. You should apply a lot of efforts to. Basically, they will ask you for loads of documents and they demand originals. You will need: original university transcripts.
The university diploma; your TEFL/CELTA certificate in original; lots of photos; (its better you ask beforehand what size of photos and in what clothes you are to be in, when taking photographs, because you otherwise you will be asked to make them more and more times!).
Photos for your work permit need to be from the waist up and you must be wearing business attire (yes, this means suit jackets for guys and girls). You will need assorted sizes for the different permits (teacher’s license and work permit). You will also need a health certificate from a Thai doctor (When I got mine they checked my blood pressure and asked if I was healthy and gave me the certificate; it cost me a buck).
Ask your school to grant you with a table in which all the subjects are included with your marks. It may be quite irritating to go home for every new item if you are asked. You should also get used to your passport being asked every now and then, as it is quite necessary to fill a lot of documents. Don’t be too scared if they don’t give it back right away. It’s quite normal that it is taken for the period of your stay in the country. There are a lot of web sites which offer a great deal of information about the related matter.
Straight after you have got the invitation from your employer, you will need a lot of paperwork to do; you will have to make a visa run to get a Non-immigrant B Visa. This type of visa is necessary to get the permission for a job. Visa will be valid for 3 month. It might seem to be a lot of time, but you will soon find out that the mass of twisted, sticky, red tape takes a while to solve.
What is good news is that your school is to help you in that business. It’s advisable to keep tabs of your visa expiration date and continue pestering them about the progress of your visa. Sometimes the visa can be expired just because somebody of the officials or some executives had not paid attention to the details or terms.
Penang, Malaysia is the best place to go with your visa. The tickets are quite not expensive and it’s quite comfortable there. No bus or tram is needed. You can get there either by sea, or fly there. Then just take a taxi and enjoy the beautiful surroundings of however overcrowded with people streets. Peneng is a nice place to stay for some time your visa is being considered. Kuala Lumpur is an expensive city, and it takes a lot to get to the city centre. It’s not so good to spend time and money for, so go better to Penang.
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