Transcript of the above video:

For those avid watchers of this channel, this video is probably going to be quite redundant; I have done a number of videos on this topic before. It seems like foreigners, it's almost like a cottage industry or a pastime as a foreigner in Thailand, especially among expats, of trying to carve out these arguments that one thing isn't the same as another because of some distinguishing characteristic. In my experience and opinion, this is all an exercise in spinning your wheels effectively, it doesn't really get you anywhere and it also leads to people operating under massive misconceptions when they are living here in Thailand. 

An example of this, I am really not picking on this commenter, I actually made this video, I saw the comment and I said to myself "you know what, you haven't made a video on that in a while," and as people come into Thailand especially coming off of this recent high season or coming to the tail end of this recent high season, I am kind of remembering "hey from time to time you do have to do videos that maybe a little bit redundant because not everybody watched your video on defining work from four years ago." Quite honestly I can't blame them because anyone that would dig through that, you are a special kind of masochist if you want to get into the nuances of Thai Immigration and Labour Law. That said, it is a misconception that can get people into some real trouble, and what am I talking about here? 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment actually on one of our 'shorts' where it was discussing work authorization. Quoting directly: "I think you are referring to employment not work. Any activity that results in compensation to that person is employment which is a problem. Activity without compensation is volunteering, depends how we define the term ‘work’.” Yeah, no it doesn't, okay and the reason I'm being a little bit blunt in saying that is because I don't understand where people walk around with these presumptions based on no real research into the underlying issue. I've done videos for years talking about the definition of "work" in Thailand. I in fact made a video called "what's the definition of work in Thailand", I'll dig it out and try to put it in the description below. Long story short, no that's never been the case. In fact go back into the post tsunami era and look up the stories of foreigners getting into trouble for Work Permit violations for coming to Thailand to volunteer in the cleanup from all of that. There were foreigners that had Work Permit violations; I'm not sure if anybody was deported at the time but there were problems. People were cited for Work Permit violations for volunteering. Compensation has nothing to do with it.

As we've discussed, the definition of work in Thailand is very broad. It basically encompasses virtually anything where you are thinking or exerting any level of effort can be determined to be work. It does not hinge upon compensation. I made this video, I know this won't necessarily be the last time I'll be making this because there are people over time that just don't, and I get it, I get it. One thing that happens with foreigners when they arrive in Thailand, this happened with me; it took me years and every now and then I still have a preconceived notion in my head regarding something to do for example with Thai Law or the way that things would presumably work in a given scenario and it will turn out I'm just totally wrong and my incorrectness is based on the fact that I have these incorrect, inaccurate preconceived notions. I had a misconception about that issue. This is a massive misconception this notion that "well work has to be compensated, volunteering does not count. I can get away with it if I am just volunteering in Thailand." There are people, plenty of people who have "volunteered" in Thailand and been cited for Work Permit violations and been deported. This is not uncommon at all. 

So this notion of carving out some distinction between "work" and "employment" based on compensation is a pretty nonsensical way to analyze this whole issue. I mean again, again I've made videos on this for years, I've cited the sources, it just is not the case.