sauces don’t really smell like fish (whether in the philippine, vietnam or thailand.) the ‘fishy smell’ is the ferment. thai sauce is basically prepared the same way as the filipino. they just almost always serve theirs with red-hot chilies. filipinos, on the other hand, like to use it as a cooking condiment.
There are two types of fish sauces in the Philippines (maybe in other Asian countries as well): one for cooking and the other, much lighter, for dipping. The latter, with a bit of calamansi juice, is absolutely divine
actually there’s a near-infinite variety. if you go farther south, you’ll see fish sauce fermented from fish entrails, oyster, mussels, sea urchin, tuna, etc. the most unusual i tasted was fermented squid: black with the ink and slimy as your worst nightmare.
NB: calamansi, for everyone’s info, is a small variety of lime which filipinos use for juice, cooking, condiments, dips.