ladislav wrote: ↑October 5th, 2021, 8:44 pm
The Philippines is way better than Thailand for romance/true love for non Oriental guys. In Thailand, a huge part of white man- Thai woman relationships originate in the entertainment industry. It is not easy for a white man to court a regular Thai woman. The stigma for them to date a "white devil" ( the farang) is still too big. In addition, you have a bigger cultural gap and much lesser English skills. And you are required by the custom to pay a bride price.
Plus, the Thais would rather have fellow E/SE Asians in their country than the farangs. They have no bond with the West the way Filipinos do.
In the PH, there is way less stigma, and most guys seem to get GF's and wives from regular ranks of society. The ladies are nurses, sales ladies, college students, office workers and it's way better accepted. There is also no " bride price" unless it's a Muslim lady.
The PH wins hands down.
These things are better in Thailand though:
Land transportation
Food
General infrastructure.
@ladislav
Of all HA members, you are the only one who could talk about the Philippines at
any level of conciseness/verbosity. The gift of summary that only someone with several decades of experience has.
Can't object of anything you said, mate.
If I could add something to compound to the pain of marrying into a Thai family, I have recently started a new job for a blockchain company, quite cool and all. One of my colleagues is a relatively young man based in Bangkok. I never met him in person and only managed to chat with him about personal life on a handful of occasions.
As it happens, he married a young Thai woman from a middle-upper class family. He didn't mention "bride price" because I had the grace to never ask. What he did spontaneously mention is that he is being constantly scrutinized by his in-laws. Every time they visit, he needs to bring a large bunch of flowers and some expensive wine or food, which will be promptly enjoyed during the home lunch or dinner. His father in law is fond of cigars, again not the cheapest merchandise to find in Thailand, and he needs to regularly oblige every now and then.
Despite of all of his efforts to please, his in-laws are constantly watching him for every smallest misstep. One glitch in whatever etiquette they have in mind for the perfect son-in-law, and they start pouring criticism on to their daughter. That's the thing he hates the most. Having a wife who is, all in all, genuinely in love with him and yet, has to constantly hear her parents complain that "she should have married Thai" and "husband doesn't really know how to respect his Thai family".
This is someone who has made considerable money with running blockchain projects and doing cryptocurrency trading. By his own admission, his "Thai family" bill is running in the thousands of dollars every month, basically for someone who doesn't even get pleased and keeps bitching anyway.
Again, I know it's a delicate topic for him and I purposely avoid touching the subject. Yet, judging from what he says, he is nearing the end of the rope on this.
Shall we say that, bar the obvious few rotten apples who exist in every culture around the world, Filipinas and their families tend to be a bit more appreciative of what their foreign sons-in-law do for them?
What I consider a bit odious about Thai culture, and this I had confirmed just by interacting with different Thai people in London, even without ever travelling to Thailand, is that Thais consider themselves some sort of royalty of South East Asia and many want to be treated as such, even if they are - by any social standard - right arrogant a**holes
Try tell them that they are the Chinese's poor cousins, and all hell would probably break loose.
