Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the notion of "your Embassy riding to the rescue"! I thought of this when I was reading an article from the Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, the actual article is titled: Pattaya can longer rely on elderly retiree expats. (I don't know if that is meant to be “no longer” or if it is a play on words) but again Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, I urge folks who are watching this video to go and read that article. There is a lot of insight. I am just going to quote one excerpt here that I thought was useful for purposes of this video. Quoting directly: "Desperate publicity about Brits stuck in Thai hospitals, dependent on crowd funding to save their lives, has finally killed off the nonsense that the Embassy will ride to the rescue."

There is this kind of misconception out there I think among all expats. Different countries of origin treat their expats differently, that is just a fact, but there is this kind of common misconception that if you go overseas your Embassy is like your Shadow; it is like always kind of there or it cloaks you and would help you if you get in some sort of major issue in that country. Yes, there are circumstances, for example when this whole pandemic thing started up, the US Embassy was providing repatriation loans for people to go back to the United States; they assisted in making travel arrangements for those who wanted to get out of Thailand, go back to the US. Yeah there are things that Embassies do but this notion that they are kind of a rescuer that they will ride to your rescue under any circumstance, it is not really the case. We have dealt with this a lot, this kind of the popping or the bursting of this bubble if you will the disillusionment of some folks when they encounter criminal charges for example here in Thailand. They will be like, "Go get my Embassy", "I want to talk to my Embassy". Yes you can talk to a Consular Officer and they are going to say, "you are going to need to contact a lawyer". Sometimes we get contacted directly by the Consulates and they say, "Hey we have got this guy in there. You may want to go and talk to him, see if you can help him", because that is not their function. Their function is just to make sure you are not being abused but the fact that you are in jail that is your issue and again, health issues, the same way. If you get injured abroad it is not really the Embassy's duty. I know a lot of expats get very passionate about this topic but I personally think, I have always considered myself an immigrant in many ways notwithstanding the fact that I love the United States; I am glad to be from the United States. I wasn't a refugee, I just ended up traveling to another country and ended up living there so in my paradigm I am basically an immigrant. I know there are expats who are passionate about this who think that the Embassy could do more about certain things and reasonable people may be able to disagree on that.

But this notion that anything that happens to a foreigner in a foreign country, or in this case Thailand and the Embassy is going to ride to your rescue, you need to disabuse yourself of that because by thinking that you could put yourself into a situation where they are indeed not going to do that and then you are in a position that you have to deal with it yourself and you may not be able to.