Elton Musk vs Unsworth how do you react to foreign white men in Thailand?

This, especially if you (the westerner) are attending a college in the US, where a substantial portion of the student body tends to be east-Asian. At the University of Michigan, for example, students from China make up about 7% of the entire student population.

Piecing together info from this site and this site, it looks like students from China makeup only about 1.4% of the entire student population at the University of Oslo.

Contrast this with national demographics outside of higher education institutions. It looks like Norway doesn’t have a massive population of immigrants from China (or any other east-Asian country for that matter). this year, 11,345 people in Norway were from China or born in Norway to immigrants from China, or 0.21% of the entire population of Norway.

The US has a lot more immigration from China than Norway in relativ terms, but not in absolute terms.
In the US in 2016, there were 22,122,951 immigrants from China, or .69% of the entire population.

I met my east-Asian wife when she was a graduate student here in the US.

Elton Musk?
Didn’t he sing “Rocket Man”?

This is the third time in this thread you’ve insinuated there was something inappropriate about Unsworth living in Thailand. That’s an odd way to suggest that Musk was wrong to do so.

I didn’t assume anything about you, I just didn’t write an exhaustive tome about every possible way leading to a marriage between a male westerner and a woman from East-Asia when giving a quick explanation of an equally brief post about a specific couple. I have zero prejudices against Americans married to Korean women.

I do understand, however, that my first post was careless with a sensitive topic and that my lack of precision made it easy to take it personally and will attempt to be more precise in the future.

Thanks, I appreciate it. But you did say “I have some prejudices against westerners who marry East-Asian women” and now you say “I have zero prejudices against Americans married to Korean women”

That seems strange to me.

Hey man, people can change and grow! Give him credit!

I was very imprecise and assumed that in the context of a discussion point about Thailand’s reputation as a sex tourism destination, “westerner” and “East-Asian” was sufficient short hand for “man from affluent western country” and “woman from impoverished conditions”. Which of course in an of itself reflects sloppy thinking if not outright prejudice.

Fair enough, thanks again.

I have encountered a couple of women from Thailand who chose to emigrate to the United States to accept jobs as university professors. Is there a prejudice, real or imagined, that Thailand is still suffering from brain drain? I would not want my country to be known only for beaches and resorts and that’s it, even leaving aside any sex trafficking stuff. (And then people start imagining things about you if you move to such a place.)

One of the aforementioned people told me that the government was supposedly taking it seriously and offering various incentives to professionals to work there.

BTW, Thailand is hardly the poorest country in the world or in Asia, so why would it get a worse reputation as a sex tourism destination for people travelling through there than, say, India, Russia, or the train station in Geneva?

I’ve normally associated these men as just being your garden-variety perverts, but I’ve heard from my ethnic Thai coworkers and business associates that Thais generally view “farang” foreigners living in Thailand as being pedophiles (although they probably meant hebephiles).

Nobody said that Thailand has fewer racists and rednecks than any other country. Interesting that they would admit it to business associates, some of whom may be assumed to be “farangs” who make regular business trips to Thailand.

I’d say the ping pong shows, massage parlors, go-go bars and the two hundred ladyboys standing by the side of the street.

OK, but consider: there are plenty of street prostitutes and massive brothels in Germany, a lot more than in Thailand, but do people consider everyone who moves to Germany, land of legal prostitution, a pervert or sex tourist?

Because it has a much larger tourism sector than those countries (over 20% for Thailand, less than 10 % for India) and has genuinely had a lot of services catered to sex tourists.

Germany is also a sex tourism destination for neighboring countries with stricter prostitution laws, but also has an overall tourism sector under 10% and lacks the beaches, low cost and exotic locals.

In my case, I guess it would be mostly historical. When I was a teenager, Bangkok was a destination for sex tourism from Australia: Russia was not.

Nowadays… well I singled ‘Russia’ out of your quote for a reason …