Program Reviews

Since watching “The Beach” back in my childhood I always wanted to visit Thailand. I was close to visit it once, but it didn’t happen. After I look into opportunities to go internship abroad, Thailand was always my number 1 priority. I chose the Internship program in Thailand offered by Global Crossroad because of two reasons. The first one is that one of my best friends have had great experience with their program for Sri Lanka. Second of all I loved the program and the affordable price. I applied online, but first I had great chat with one of their customer representatives. I choose the medical and healthcare internship because I want to pursue a career in medicine.

Long story short, I was instantly welcomed warmly by my host family. I was located and accommodated in Surin, North East of Thailand. I was picked up at the right time and accommodated accordingly..

My role in the internship project was to help the unfortunate and needy people who are deprived of general medical assistance. I’ve worked for the local hospitals, rural community clinics and child care centers. It was truly an amazing experience from which I learned a lot about medicine and about life in general.

As an intern I’ve worked for 4 days a week starting from 8am to 4 pm. I was picked up and dropped at the right time. I always worked under the supervision of local doctors and surgeons. Some of the duties I di was measuring temperature, weight, height and pressure. I’ve also provided first aid treatments, did regular rounds and normal checkups, diagnose and prescribe medicines. I was also asked to help the hospital with the administrative affairs and documentation.

I think that I have learned a lot of valuable things that will help in my career in medicine. Especially, the thing that touched me was working with patients from rural communities.

There is time for leisure as well. We spend a lot of chill-out times at the tropical beaches in the evenings. The night life in Thailand is amazing. The local staff was very welcoming and helped us to find the best sightseeing and recreational activities. I was pretty informed on the local activities and which places to visit.

I usually traveled in the weekends to Bangkok and Phuket. I visited the famous beach of the movie. I also rode elephants, it was crazy fun. I also visited Ayutthaya. There are many places to visit in this lovely city: the ruins of the old city now form the Ayutthaya Historical Park, an archaeological site that contains palaces, Buddhist temples, monasteries.. Everything looks authentic and purely represents Thai culture.

Overall, the organization of the whole internship program was flawless. I was never over-charged and everything went smooth and as desired. I’ve seen a lot of great stuff and learned and experienced a lot of new things.

Definitely worth every cent and I was really sad when leaving. I had wonderful time! Highly recommended internship program! Thailand is ASTONISHING!

We just completed a program with GlobalCrossroad
The project with the local Association, but dealing with GlobalCrossroad was not pleasant at all.
Surely they were reactive to provide us with information before we subscribed. We subscribed for 2 weeks advertised at 213$ per person (+299$ registration fees)

After paying the initial 99$ registration fees, we received an invoice mentioning:
- 293$ program fees, 28% more than advertised
- 25$ per person for transfer fees from the airport where locally it costs no more than 3$ by taxi
- Spanish classes we never asks for
- mandatory travel insurance for which we never had any details
- 5% surcharge on the credit card

We asked to review the invoice to remove un requested Spanish lessons and the travel insurance as we already had ours
Luckily we noticed the Spanish lessons. We heard from other volunteers they did not notice the trick and got charged.
And It took us 3 months to remove the travel insurance from the invoice

It is our fault not having noticed the increase in program fees on our invoice. Indeed as they are to be paid in cash to the local coordinator, they did not appear in balance due figures

We actually realised when the local coordinator asked us for the money. We sent email to GlobalCrossroad to correct the discrepancy. GlobalCrossroad suddenly lost their reactivity and we had to wait till the very last day to get an answer, and a negative one on top of that.

Iam warning here potential volunteers who might apply or already applied on programs with GlobalCrossroad that they might face tricks in their invoice and be asked to pay a bit more than they thought