Well I do! And from my own experiences, it seems you are spreading a lot of exaggerations and misinformation about Thai and even PI:ladislav wrote:
And you do not know what's it like to be white in Asia.
- First of all, you can put your language, race, and local experience cards right back into the deck. Cus I am a white guy who lives in Asia and understands Mandarin plus a fair bit of Thai and even a bit of Taiwanese.
- Why don’t I get called names in Thai these days the way you did 20 years ago? And I’ve been there a lot. What about my western friends living there, some of whom understand Thai. Is it like, as soon as the last one of them gets off the bus or BTS, all the Thais start saying all kinds of nasty things or behaving differently? Come-on Lad, reality check please!
- Just 3 weeks ago, I met ManInSiam - a decent looking and slim 6’1� Korean American, right in Bangkok. He had already been there for a month and spent a couple hours relating to me his experiences with local people and girls. From what he told me, he gets no special treatment relative to a similar looking white guy. It’s hardly been a paradise for him that you claim it should be as he’s struggled with finding work or getting very far with any of the few local girls he’s met.
- Name me just one entertainment venue in greater Bangkok that’s not ‘Japanese only’ which will refuse me entry due to my being non-Asian or non-Thai. If you cannot, please kindly let-go of your silly assumption that what held true in the early 90s necessarily holds true today in this regard. If you can, please name it and make it clear how I can find it as I will be back in Bangkok before the end of this month. I will definitely check-it out and report my experience. Put-up or shut-up!
- I don’t think it’s nearly as shameful as you claim for a decent looking lighter skinned middle class Thai girl to be seen in Bangkok with the right kind of white expat. If the guy is age appropriate, good looking, and dressed for success, many such Thai girls will feel totally comfortable I believe. I’m not 100% sure of this as I can’t read their minds. But even I have had some personal experience dating such girls and they never expressed any hesitation about meeting me in public or even where we might be seen by the girl’s social circle (work place or uni campus).
- As for PI, I have spent a bit of time there by now and have been corresponding with a few Filipinas including some middle class ones from Manila. From what most tell me, they do differentiate westerners. For example, I asked one of them how she would respond if a presentable western stranger approached her in public to get her number. She told me she would assume he’s just after sex and do her best to make a quick exit. But not so if he’s Filipino. When I got into a conversation with middle class Filipina sitting next to me on plane from LA to Manila, I asked her whether any of her immediate family members were married to or dating westerners. She told me no, they all went for ‘love’ instead of ‘money’. And she herself was divorced from a Filipino. Yet she still was not interested in finding a western guy. She told me she did not wanna be like one of those ‘gold digger’ girls or prostitute herself. She believed in love or nothing which she implied could only happen with a guy who looked and acted Filipino. Many of the other interactions I’ve had with middle class Filipinas or Filipinos suggest a similar theme. The white whore mongers and sugar daddies have damaged our image in PI. We are perceived in a bad way by those who are self-sufficient or as a mark by those who need our help.
- You may claim that a whole new world opens up there for the westerner once he learns Tagalog and/or Visayan. But I’ve gotta wonder. If that’s true, why do you, a speaker of both those languages, choose to live alternately between Ermita and Angeles City – the 2 most notorious lower-end international whore districts in the PI?
- A lot of PI girls have told me adamantly that they would not consider dating a black guy. But I thought race was a non-issue in PI. In contrast, I’ve met several Chinese girls in southern China recently who told me, it’s fine with them, that black are people just like anyone else. One of them even dates Africans. Now I realize that mainland Chinese are know for being race conscious and many will rule-out blacks or even other westerners as dating prospects (Winton’s recent experiences suggest this too). So I just find it interesting that as of late, I’ve run into more racist particular Filipinas than Chinese, at least as far as dating is concerned.
- One thing I will say in favor of Filipnas/os is that many do seem very easygoing and happy. I appreciate that quality a lot as it contrasts strongly to the more serious environments of several other Asian countries. But that quality has little to do with the distinctions you tend focus on in your writings about Thai vs. PI – relative amounts of racism, xenophobia, and discrimination.