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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30032 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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Firstly, I was taken aback by how fair Thai people tend to be. I thought they'd be swarthier, akin to Malaysians or Indonesians, but quite a large fraction could easily pass as Caucasian if not for their facial features. The ones who are really tanned seem to be people who work out under the sun, having skin tones I expect.

This is due to large Chinese immigration (especially in the north) as well as fairer skin being seen as higher class especially among women who generally cover their skin and wear sunscreen to keep from tanning.

Secondly, they're piss poor at speaking English.

I found everyone to speak pretty good english when I was there. It's much easier to get around in Thailand knowing no Thai than it is to get around France knowing no French or Japan knowing no Japanese.

Thailand is really clean. [...] The roads are in great condition

...I can't agree but I've never been to India so my comparisons are mostly with first world countries

But the most perplexing thing is the sheer number of pickup trucks here.

I was surprised by this too, specifically the giant US style trucks

Is there something about the Asian physiognomy that makes it easier for them to pass?

Based on nothing but my own observations, there is less sexual divergence in the phenotypes between East and SE Asian men and women than between men and women in other groups of people.

Fairer skin is strongly fetishized in India too, which is why I wasn't considering sun avoidance to be the defining factor. It makes sense that they'd be fairer if there were large numbers of ethnic Chinese mixed in, so I presume that's it.

There is that, but the ethnic Tai (of which the Thailand-majority Thai are part) are also relatively new to the region compared to other austronesian groups in Southeast Asia, having settled in southern China in prehistory rather than in Southeast Asia directly. The Tai had a period of massive migration out of southern China in the late first millennium CE as Chinese dynasties, especially the Tang, consolidated and integrated its southern provinces into the empire.

There are still ethnic Tai in China that are still genetically and culturally very similar iirc, and they look much the same as well.

That isn’t to discount immigration from China into Thailand and southeast China in general, as is well known for the latter half of the second millennium; one of their kings and national heroes was half-Chinese!

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