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Thinking of moving from MGL. Prospects in Vietnam?
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ExpatLuke



Joined: 11 Feb 2012
Posts: 744

PostPosted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 2:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

EmGee wrote:
I think I'll visit HCMC in june just to see if i like it. Ive already been to Seoul a couple of times and quite liked it. So, just for due diligence sakes, I should check out 'Nam. Thanks for the exchange tips. Isnt it possible to get paid at a USD rate?


I've never worked at a school that pays in USD, but I've heard some do it... probably the non-legal variety.
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deadlift



Joined: 08 Jun 2010
Posts: 267

PostPosted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 4:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

RMIT pays 80% in USD and 20% in VND.
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EmGee



Joined: 14 Mar 2014
Posts: 38

PostPosted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 10:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Many schools in Mongolia calculate the salary in USD but pay in local currency. It's perfectly legal here. They're not supposed to actually pay in dollars but can calculate the salary that way. It protects expats from the wild swings in exchange rate.

Ok if viet schools don't do that, I'd have to accept it.
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s10czar



Joined: 20 Feb 2010
Posts: 60

PostPosted: Tue Apr 15, 2014 9:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

EmGee wrote:
Dating aside, Vietnam looks like a long-shot because everybody is saying the salaries are too low to save any money. I'm not willing to take a big cut in salary and lifestyle so I think I'll check out Korea instead.


Sorry to potentially burst your bubble but being 50+ I can tell you that you're going to have an EXCEPTIONALLY difficult time with the dating scene in Korea; not to mention the job scene. Age is a big deal in Korea and you don't get bonus points for being "western." Take it from me...why do you think I'm lurking on this site? I'm going to 'nam.
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Tigerstyleone



Joined: 26 Mar 2010
Posts: 181

PostPosted: Tue Apr 15, 2014 5:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

But he's a white guy from England, healthy and fit. Most importantly he passes for younger anywhere. A true novelty of a man.

Don't think his time in Mongolia has confused him of his social proof when it comes to dating. I'm sure he can continue his lifestyle in Korea, especially a city like Seoul.
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EmGee



Joined: 14 Mar 2014
Posts: 38

PostPosted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 5:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tigerstyleone,

I don't think I'm a novelty but I've noticed that if you're over 50 it helps if you don't look it. That's just marketing on the part of the schools and it has helped me where ageism is a problem.

Anyway, the best strategy is to go the HCMC and check it out for myself this summer. If it proves untenable I can try Seoul. If that falls I can keep my job in Mongolia.
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Ralph Winfield



Joined: 26 Apr 2013
Posts: 30

PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 9:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Daveric wrote:
EmGee wrote:
Don't worry Kurtz. I won't compete with you for "vulnerable" bar girls because my playboy days are over. I prefer wealthy, well-educated and independent women, like my current girlfriend.

Dating aside, Vietnam looks like a long-shot because everybody is saying the salaries are too low to save any money. I'm not willing to take a big cut in salary and lifestyle so I think I'll check out Korea instead.

A no-brainer. Salaries are higher in Korea, they pay airfare, housing, health insurance, pension, and bonus. Friendly natives, too, although Nam has that also but none of the former.


I'm going to be flamed for posting this opinion. Here goes...

South Korea is considered to the one of the most rabidly nationalistic and xenophobic countries in Asia, and Western embassies up until the 2002 World Cup of Football warned their citizens in bluntly stated language to not work for Korean companies and/or educational institutions due to the serious risk of being screwed over. Even the national universities, the government's English Programme in Korea, and family-owned conglomerates like Samsung, L.G., and Hyundai were known for screwing over foreign staff (non-payment of salaries and contract fraud).

And the dating scene has never been a friendly one for Black and White expats in Korea. Quite a few Westerners have been murdered since Korea "opened up" to the world in 1992 for apparently dating local ladies or asking one too many times for that months-late pay packet. And mass print, television, and electronic media campaigns against foreign males-especially teachers and U.S. military personnel and their families- have been waged since the early 1970's. This is the country whose government endorses The Korean Sentry web site -an openly racist and xenophobic site that's a member of VANK. Google VANK. Anyway, back to those local lasses and foreign guys.

The palpable hatred of foreign males by too many Korean males has always been there for one to see since the Dutch trader Hamel's ship ran aground on the southern coast of Jeju Island in the 17th century. His men were mostly eaten by the locals after they were captured; the others were made slaves. Thousands and thousand of French missionaries were rounded up and murdered near the end of the 1890's for being Whites and foreign. In the early nineteen eighties, French language teachers were suddenly the target of Korean males in parliament, on the telly and radio, and in the newspapers because they made good money from teaching French at unies and because a few had Korean lovers. At least one Frenchman was murdered in central Seoul for having a Korean girllfriend. By the latter 1990's, a small group of males in Gyyeongi Province, led by a Korean English teacher named Mr. Lee, had turned their attention to the several thousands of Western men teaching E.F.L. in country. By January of 2005, they'd become officially registered as Anti-English Spectrum. They boasted of having nearly 100,000 Korean netizens signing a cyber petition to immediately deport ALL Western males from Korea and being able to get at least a few negative laws specifically about Western male instructors passed by their compatriots in parliament. At least 3 openly violent directives were issued on their web site between February and May of that year, encouraging Koreans of all ages to spy on and attack Western teachers. Years passed before Canadian, Australian, Kiwi, British, and U.S. news outlets started to report on the mass campaign by the group to ruin the collective reputations of Western males in Korea.

Getting back to dating Korean females, you can be attacked by a group o men for just asking a local lady for the time of day, and it's no surprise that Mongolians and Koreans are very, very closely related.. Both groups are notoriously emotional and violence-prone. Male E.F.L. teachers have been attacked or murdered in their classrooms, and there are a few unsolved murders of White guys who had local girlfriends. One very young American lad died in a very suspicious fire in his apartment before the Beijing Olympics. His gal's dad was a suspect.

That said, more than a few Korean males are nice men and possess modern sensibilities.


Last edited by Ralph Winfield on Sun Apr 20, 2014 10:20 am; edited 2 times in total
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EmGee



Joined: 14 Mar 2014
Posts: 38

PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 10:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Good post about South Korea. Mongolia is similar but we expats restrict our activities to avoid trouble.

One possibility in Korea is to date expat females. There must be a lot of expat females from all over the world. When I lived in Beijing I actually dated more expat Asians than Chinese.

How about HCMC? Are there dating opportunities within the expat community? Such as Philippinas, Indonesians, Thais, South Americans, etc?
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Ralph Winfield



Joined: 26 Apr 2013
Posts: 30

PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 10:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

EmGee wrote:
Good post about South Korea. Mongolia is similar but we expats restrict our activities to avoid trouble.

One possibility in Korea is to date expat females. There must be a lot of expat females from all over the world. When I lived in Beijing I actually dated more expat Asians than Chinese.

How about HCMC? Are there dating opportunities within the expat community? Such as Philippinas, Indonesians, Thais, South Americans, etc?


I lost a lot of money to a Vietnamese-Frenchman who now resides in Long Beach, California and was forked around endlessly in every imaginable way by the other 2 Vietnamese guys from Asem Link Education in Dong Hoi and Vinh. I no longer live in Vietnam as a result. That said, I've met expats who like working in Ho Chi Minh City. The pay for you should be AT LEAST 30 American dollars per hour. Hanoi City paid me 25 bucks per hour for being a substitute kindy teacher at a city-operated school for a day.
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Ralph Winfield



Joined: 26 Apr 2013
Posts: 30

PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 10:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

In South Korea, you'd have no trouble meeting genuine, sincere ladies from places such as Manila, Bangkok, Osaka, Montreal, New York, L.A., Berlin, Paris, Kathmandu, an too many other places to list here! Some of the most sensible, intellectually-inclined, and strikingly nice-looking females I befriended in South Korea were from the central and far eastern regions of the Russian Federation.

I guarantee that you'd be able to find a decent teaching job in one week if you spent 5 hours per day seeking one. As you may know, being a youngish-looking fifty year old CAN present problems when looking for work in Asia. However, stress the fact that you're a mature-minded man and stress as well that you'd be happy to work IN ANY of the major cities.

Oh, I nearly forgot to add that Geoje Island near Pusan City has about 20,000 expat engineers and other white collar employees at the Samsung and Hyundai ship-making factories. Trust me, Geoje is a very nice island, and the weather's comparable to the warmest part of England in Winter. The expat scene is available for your reading pleasure on the Internet.

Good luck!

Ralph
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skarper



Joined: 12 Oct 2006
Posts: 477

PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 6:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Korea does have its issues but I think they're overstated - in general and in the post above.

I lived there, had relationships with two Korean women and never encountered any trouble. Sure, some men could be rather childish but I have always been able to ignore that sort of rubbish and there was never any physical threat.

Coming and going late at night and in the early hours in a nasty area of Seoul to get to and from work I carried a few improvised self defense items - and I'm a largish guy who looks like he wouldn't be a push over in a fight. Koreans are mostly pretty cowardly - like Japanese and Vietnamese when it comes to fighting. The only issue I had was some stupid younger guys deliberately bumping shoulders with me as we passed in a subway underpass. Small potatoes.

I was never cheated by any of my 3 employers - all paid on time and in full and some even paid more than they really had to IMO.

But there ARE and certainly were a lot of hazards to working in Korea and a thorough study of the Korean board will forewarn and forearm those thinking of going there for a while.

I have fond memories of Korea and miss some things including the often hard working and biddable students. If you're in a larger city there are just hoards of beautiful women around and though it may be hard to 'date' casually if you're sincere and attractive (not necessarily physically) they will in my experience find you.

Korean posts don't belong here of course, so I expect this may get deleted by the mods. Just thought I should add the other side to the points raised above.
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TRH



Joined: 27 Oct 2011
Posts: 340
Location: Hawaii

PostPosted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 2:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

skarper wrote:
If you're in a larger city there are just hoards of beautiful women around and though it may be hard to 'date' casually if you're sincere and attractive (not necessarily physically) they will in my experience find you.
This is both anecdotal and apocryphal but your comment reminds me of an interview in 1968 of Vicky Cayetano, the first lady of Hawaii who had married Governor Ben Cayetano mid-term. This woman was one of the state's most successful businesswomen in her own right and owner of a large commercial laundry that she had started herself. When asked how the governor had picked her she replied "The man doesn't pick the woman, the woman picks the man."
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ExpatLuke



Joined: 11 Feb 2012
Posts: 744

PostPosted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 11:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I agree with skarper... South Korea does have its problems, but they were largely over stated. I've had a number of friends, both women and men who taught in Korea for a number of years, and they had nothing but good things to say about it, and after a few months of teaching in Vietnam, they couldn't wait to go back.They said they dated multiple women, and the only problem they encountered were some side comments made while walking together on the street.

Its no secret that Korea, Japan, and China are extremely ethnocentric countries and their citizens have what we in the West would consider racist attitudes. Vietnam even has that in a large degree, but they don't have any illusions about their country being better than others to go with it.

It's just part of the territory if you want to teach in Asia.
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skarper



Joined: 12 Oct 2006
Posts: 477

PostPosted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 12:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When dealing with Japanese, Koreans and to a lesser extent Vietnamese it is helpful to remember they are young countries. Japan and Korea having been destroyed and remade in the form most pleasing to American eyes - while Vietnam was pretty much just destroyed...

Anyway - I find it helpful to consider Japan and Korea like stroppy teenagers or Uni age kids - and Vietnam like quite a young child.

The UK is of course just a doddering old auntie with delusions of past grandeur... I won't start on America.

This is all a bit tongue in cheek, needless to say. It just helps me to be tolerant of their respective foibles. All part of the wonderful 'ASIAN EXPERIENCE'.
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JoeKing



Joined: 30 Apr 2008
Posts: 519

PostPosted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 12:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ExpatLuke wrote:
I agree with skarper... South Korea does have its problems, but they were largely over stated. I've had a number of friends, both women and men who taught in Korea for a number of years, and they had nothing but good things to say about it, and after a few months of teaching in Vietnam, they couldn't wait to go back.They said they dated multiple women, and the only problem they encountered were some side comments made while walking together on the street.

Overstated is an understatement. Wayyyyyyy overstated is more like it. Ralph's description bears no resemblance to the Korea I know. Most people have the same experience as your friends, Luke.
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