Racism against foreigners in Thailand

[SirHumpsaLott]

LOL...I've read most of these posts where first time visitors/mongers..are asking:

Are thai girls racist...do they like black/brown/yellow guys?

OF course there is racism in thailand...from a visiting mongering perspective it does not matter..who the fuck cares?...for every bar or freelance girl who refuses to sleep with you, u will find 10-20 of equal or higher value that will gladly fuck you silly...

that my friend--was my point in an overly simplified manner...we are not here trying to enter the upper echelons of thai society..

I am in Bankok now, been here about a week now and while I have noticed some of the girls have given me the brushoff or otherwise made it pretty clear that they're not interested in me either because I'm black or whatever, I am constantly finding many others that are STRONGLY interested in what I have to offer.

I've gotten the same results from other types of women in other countries as well as my hometown in the U.S. It's the same story ANYWHERE you go; some women are just into different types of men, some only like men of their own race/ethnicity, while most don't give a shit either way and of the last group, their numbers are steadily rising.

There is nothing I've seen or experienced here so far that would indicate Thais have an especially negative attitude about this as anyone else. I'm sure there are just as many Thai racist idiots as there are white, black, or brown ones IMO and to make Thais out as particularly racist is both wrong and unfair not only to Thais, but also to those few out there that would read something like that and take it for absolute truth.

Like I said before; regarding the racism that OTH is so strongly trying to implicate as so especially strong in Thais against men of color, their behavior is really no different than anyone else's.

[Sanook D]

if one considers angkor wat belonging to the thais (actually siamese) after the siamese raped and pillaged and then sacked it, making off with the khmer's art, music, culture and complete troupe of royal khmer court dancers. . .at the time of the khmer empire, the siamese were an ignorant rabble living in a villages

whereas nowadays the siamese live in villages and small, medium, and large cities.

you've made a great effort to educate a dick, let's see if you get a "thank you."

[Traveler1234]

I like the rhythm of "Dick and Pete"....

Mr. Chairman, LBM, OTH and others - maybe you can all arrange for the two to meet at Giotto's for a drink.....the buenos aires gringo and the aussie have a lot in common. Split my BF, piper1's three beers, the free dinner on the house?

Just a thought

[Giotto]

Is there a cancellation at the always full L. Lodge? What day was he supposed to check-in Giotto?
...

LittleBigMan,

LOL, Livingstone's Lodge is not always full...and I don't know whether there was a cancellation related to this discussion.

Let us stop this nonsense, my report was quite offensive, too. It was definitely not necessary to get involved into this discussion.


Giotto

[Kiwi 69]

Funny you should mention that and totally off topic but when I used to hire cooks, I would tell them to fill out the entire application and then sign it in my presence. I then used this to cull out all left-handed cooks who, while undoubtedly worthy individuals, would turn all the ladles, spoons, and pot handles the other way, which slowed me down considerably. Anyway my friend I am meeting in Thailand is left-handed and if you are reading this, buddy, I realized a long time ago that this was a way wrong thing to do.

At the Mc Donalds University and become a " Human Resources Specialist " ?

[LittleBigMan]

Is there a cancellation at the always full L. Lodge? What day was he supposed to check-in Giotto?

Blunderer, I know this is the thread for racism, but did you really need to take Dickheads word to the task and be so unsensitive? I'm hurt that you use the phase "Brown with slanty eyes ". I'm going to my room now!

LBM

[Old Thai Hand]

One of the reasons the Thais were also able to captilize with invading the area around Siem Reap and Angkor Wat was the decision to move the Royal Court and Capital from Angkor Wat to Oudong to break up the Brahmas (at the time the Hindu religion was still dominant with the noble families) influece and control of the Royal Court as the Empire converting to Theravada Buddhaism ascended in society. You will note of interest that actually Mahayana (Tibetan) Buddhaism variant was the first dominant Buddhist variant in the Khmer Empire.

Another conflict we have seen in history decided by a UN Court in the 1960's was giving Preah Vehar back to Cambodia from Thailand. Thais had claimed that as their own when in fact it was built by a Khmer King.

Thanks for the interesting additional information. There has in fact been a lot of cultural tension between the Thais and Cambodia almost all to do with historical issues such as you mention vis a vis Preah Vehar. There are also similar types of tension with Laos stemming back to the Laos invasion of Isaan in 1829. The Thais were going to make a movie about this war a couple of years ago, until strong protests from the Lao government forced the film to be shelved.

[Member #3443]

One of the reasons the Thais were also able to captilize with invading the area around Siem Reap and Angkor Wat was the decision to move the Royal Court and Capital from Angkor Wat to Oudong to break up the Brahmas (at the time the Hindu religion was still dominant with the noble families) influece and control of the Royal Court as the Empire converting to Theravada Buddhaism ascended in society. You will note of interest that actually Mahayana (Tibetan) Buddhaism variant was the first dominant Buddhist variant in the Khmer Empire.

Another conflict we have seen in history decided by a UN Court in the 1960's was giving Preah Vehar back to Cambodia from Thailand. Thais had claimed that as their own when in fact it was built by a Khmer King.

[Old Thai Hand]

Typing quickly doesn't explain "I could care less." That is just so fucking uneducated and ignorant that you could stay at Livingstone's Lodge for the next 2568 Chinese New Years and never make up for such a gaffe.

Well, gee, aren't we an angry young man? Are we having a bad start to the year?

Ok, then. I COULDN'T care less about your opinion. I may be "fucking uneducated and ignorant". But, you haven't exactly shown yourself to be either educated or enlightened. The tone of your posts is rather like gutter-speak, not something I would expect from a professor.

[Dickhead]

Any definition of the "modern era" is arbitrary. None of what you say makes me see why the Thai actress was incorrect in what she said, as long as she used the past tense. Typing quickly doesn't explain "I could care less." That is just so fucking uneducated and ignorant that you could stay at Livingstone's Lodge for the next 2568 Chinese New Years and never make up for such a gaffe.

Now back to Racism in Thailand. I have a farang friend whom I met in Buenos Aires who has been living in Thailand for about two years now and has decided he will probably move on. I asked him why. He had a couple of reasons but one was that "living here is somewhat akin to being a monkey in a zoo. We (white faces) are put on display and for the amusement of the masses."

I am not planning on living in Thailand so I don't care but it is food for thought. This guy is a very thoughtful, moderate, middle-of-the-road type of person.

Me, I am just going to fuck a bunch of the women there, form no meaningful attachments, and then leave. I am certainly not going to stay there and work under the circumstances you describe where you are too gosh darn a-scared of your local co-workers to even eat lunch with them.

[Old Thai Hand]

the entire province of siem reap, in which angkor wat is located (note there are many alternative spellings for that), most certainly was part of thailand for quite a long time. so, you aren't an english professor and you are not a history professor, and you are not as smart as you think you are.

well, here we have a declarative statement, i.e. hypothesis without a shred of empirical evidence to back it up.

but, here, i'll help you, professor dickhead.

technically, you are correct, if one considers angkor wat belonging to the thais (actually siamese) after the siamese raped and pillaged and then sacked it, making off with the khmer's art, music, culture and complete troupe of royal khmer court dancers - from which the siamese copied what became classical siamese (now thai) art, music, culture and siamese royal court dancing. using your logic, angkor wat also belonged to the vietnamese, too as the chams from vietnam sacked angkor wat in the 12th century and at various times from the 16th to the 19th century, cambodia was a vassle state of the vietnamese.

at the time of the khmer empire, the siamese were an ignorant rabble living in a villages, with little culture. they were vassles of the khmers and in fact large parts of siam were part of the khmer empire - siem riep means "siam conquered" and there are several khmer temples in isaan (phimai, for example). for about 400 years, from the 11th until the 15th century, the siamese were therefore actually allies, or more likely mercenaries used by the khmer in their many wars with the chams. because the khmers viewed the siamese as completely wild savages who were totally undisciplined, they used them as shock troops and essentially canon fodder, saving the khmer troups for the final coup de grace.

when the khmer empire weakened and began to decline in the 15th century, the siamese took the advantage to sneak in and attack angkor wat and strike the death blow. the surviving khmers tried to maintain a semblance of their kingdom, but eventually alternated between siamese and vietnamese control until the french took over cambodia, at the request of the cambodian king, in the mid-19th century.

so, i suppose you're right in one sense. but, angkor wat has never belonged to thailand in the modern era, which is what i was talking about.

the incident in which the cambodians rioted after the alleged remark from the thai actress occurred in january 2003 (i took the trouble of looking it up).

if you are indeed a professor, then you should know better than to challenge someone's position unless you're prepared to back it up with more than declarative statements. or, did you buy your degree on khaosan road?

you sound incredibly childish to me, especially in your threat to cancel your reservation at livingstone's. i bet you were one of those kids who didn't play nice in the sandbox, bullied the other kids and then said, you were taking all your toy trucks and going home.

oh, and btw, i'm not a history professor or an english teacher. so, excuse my grammatical and any other errors. i sometimes type quickly and make mistakes. i suppose though, that you never make mistakes, do you?

[Blunderer]

Example....I believe it is a well established fact that this is a thing of the past amongst rival English fans. At least it is to a stage of minor irrelevance. Take the Italians however, or one of many other European countries, who continually get away with (although on the odd occasion mildly disciplined) blatant racist chanting from masses in the crowd when faced against Black players in various competitions. Or you could go on to talk about the pathetic behaviour of those in scicily(sp?) whose antics quite recently lead to the killing of a few policemen. Or the even more recent nationwide RIOTS in Italy which lead to the cancellation of several games in the same day all over the country. Sorry to be a ****, but please be aware that we have moved on somewhat since the '80's.
Sid

Yeah, ok - slightly outdated example.. but still something ridiculous to fight over.

Other examples:
Turf wars in the US/UK - kid was killed in the UK on NYE ostensibly because he was outside his postcode
Bankokers snubbing Isaaners
Malaysians and the appalling way a lot of them treat the Indonesians
Hell.. a world famous and very busy technical forum needed to shutdown recently because of fighting over the new high def format (Blue-Ray vs HDDVD) an I believe there was some offline fighting about it as well where someone went to someone else's house kicked off some fisticuffs
Chinese vs Tibetans or Mongolias
The current 'War on Terror' which seems to just be wacko arsehole fundamentalist Muslims against wacko arsehole fundamentalist Christians.. prior to that, there was the great campaign against pinko commie scum.... there's always a reason to be fighting people different.

Whilst you can point to the English or the Italians or any other nation or race, my belief is it is endemic to the human condition. The English are no better and no worse than anyone else - they were randomly picked as an example.

Years and years ago I watched a Babylon 5 episode that summed it up nicely.. the premise was something like this.

There's an alien race. Some of them wear a red piece of clothing, others wear a blue piece of clothing - the colour they wear is selected at random. Blue tries to kill red and vice versa. As a species our behavior is not dissimilar.

[SidTheSexist]

Have you ever met one of those people who have to be fucking right all the time no matter what... I don't mean as in opinionated, I mean as in factual detail.. correcting their friend's harmless embellishments when a story is being told to a 3rd party

Example....

but there are more recent ones that are just as ridiculous, members of rival football clubs in England brawling for example

I believe it is a well established fact that this is a thing of the past amongst rival English fans. At least it is to a stage of minor irrelevance. Take the Italians however, or one of many other European countries, who continually get away with (although on the odd occasion mildly disciplined) blatant racist chanting from masses in the crowd when faced against Black players in various competitions. Or you could go on to talk about the pathetic behaviour of those in scicily(sp?) whose antics quite recently lead to the killing of a few policemen. Or the even more recent nationwide RIOTS in Italy which lead to the cancellation of several games in the same day all over the country. Sorry to be a ****, but please be aware that we have moved on somewhat since the '80's.
Sid

[Dickhead]

Funny you should mention that and totally off topic but when I used to hire cooks, I would tell them to fill out the entire application and then sign it in my presence. I then used this to cull out all left-handed cooks who, while undoubtedly worthy individuals, would turn all the ladles, spoons, and pot handles the other way, which slowed me down considerably. Anyway my friend I am meeting in Thailand is left-handed and if you are reading this, buddy, I realized a long time ago that this was a way wrong thing to do.

[Traveler1234]

What I will do, to be fair and reasonable like the quantitative analyst that I am, is I will stay at Giotto's place for at least one night, hopefully meet the guy, and go from there. I am just not sure based on my reading of his posts that we are on the same page. And, rumor has it that there are several other hotels in Bangkok.

Many people have enjoyed Livingstone's Lodge without ever meeting the owner. Your 'analysis' of and decision to stay at this hotel based on a this thread is pretty short-sighted, IMHO.

It would be your loss - not his. And yes there are many other hotels in Bangkok - luckily none are racists - they all accept green, etc.