So far I had the pleasure of visiting Thailand twice in my life and everytime I came there I was welcomed by the most warm hearted (Asian) people you can ever imagine! Of course one can argue that this kind of hospitable behaviour seems to be quite natural for a country like Thailand because of its huge tourism branch. However I am convinced that this is only partly true as personally I had very pleasent experiences with Thai people outside of Asia. They were as friendly as in e.g. Bangkok or Pataya. Always having a sincere smile on their lips so I just cannot help myself smiling back!

Nevertheless there is one single prejudice against Thai people that is quite popular among non-Thais. Again I do not intend to generalize anyone and of course I do not want to spread nasty things about these ever-smiling people (who are probably the friendliest Asians in Asia – at least from my point of view!)! Well…how can I put this? I often heard from both Asians and non-Asians whenever the talk comes up to Thailand: Aren’t there lots of prostitutes over there? AAAARGH!!! I really do not confirm this and I hate saying it but… honestly I saw several young girls holding hands with some old farts coming from the West, as well. That kind of shocked me since there were more than a few who were my age.

It is definitively wrong and ignorant to say all Thai women are seeking for “rich” white men in order to get a better lifestyle for their families and themselves. (Of course prostitution is by no means uncommon in Thailand but this is not a Thai-only problem. Brazil, the USA, Peru, India, the Dominican Republic, Russia…they all have to cope with this as well!) So I busied myself with this topic for a while since my task is to vanish nasty prejudices of any kind and thereby I found an interesting website, called thailandguru.com. The author himself  is Thai and so he is perfectly able to give us an insight from a native point of view based on his own experiences:

“In Thailand, there are generally two sorts of lady: Prostitutes, and Mainstream (non-prostitutes). Based on statistics from various sorts, only about 2% of Thai ladies are prostitutes. However, these prostitutes tend to concentrate themselves where the business is, which includes a few square kilometers in the tourist and expat concentration areas in lower Sukhumvit and in Pattaya, and they tend to stand out since they try to get the attention of foreign guys. It is very important to understand that what you see in those zones is very different from what you come across in the rest of Thailand (except other hot spots).

There is a big difference between mainstream Thai ladies and those you can meet in bars and nightclubs. What is often said about “Thai ladies” in general, actually applies only to [ex-]prostitutes, who seem to make up the majority of girlfriends and wives of foreigners, so don’t believe everything you read and hear … e.g., “Thai girls are unfaithful”, or “Thai girls just want your money”. Substitute the word “prostitute” for “girl” in those sentences and it makes more sense. If you’re old enough to read this, and sophisticated enough to use Internet well, then you should be old enough to not believe everything you hear and read about Thai ladies and smart enough to think by yourself…”

Although I am perfectly consious about not to generalize anyone and anything it was interesting for me to read these articles and I felt a little bit more enlightened afterwards. I can only recommend you to have a look at his page since he provides you with a bunch of impressing background knowledge!

I know cannibalism is by no means uncommon in some very isolated parts of the world. But with these pictures I had slight doubts whether Thai people really would be able to that at all. Fortunately things cleared up:

There were several groups of volunteers who went out and helped transporting the bodies of unidentified accident victims to the coroner office. This was due to the Thai coroner office lacks of having enough manpower to go out and to perform all the tasks of retrieving the bodies themselves.

These cruel pictures of harmless smiling Thai people cutting a black man into pieces are nothing else than a kind of photographic documentary of cemetary clean up ceremony. They came from an event hosted by one of the volunteer groups mentioned above. Many times the bodies were never claimed so they were actually stored in an unclaimed cemetary. But as soon as they run out of space to bury the bodies they had to clean out the cemetary.

So actually on these photos you can see the volunteers cleaning the cemetary by removing the unclaimed bodies. This needed to be done to create room for the new bodies. In order to maximize the space they kept the bones only, so they needed to remove the flesh (which later would be cremated).

These people have worked with the dead bodies for so long. That is why they did not bother to sit down and have their lunch next to them. Consequently they were not eating the corpses! What they did was just eating the rice with some stir-fry meat with ginger.

…please, this is not for the faint-hearted – I mean it! Actually I was about to post something different and trust me I was seriously thinking about whether to post this or not, but lately I decided to do so since it is so shocking and beyond my own imagination: While doing some researches on Thai people I found pictures of Thais eating a black man!!!

If you judge yourself to be hard enough then just click on this picture and follow the link to view the whole thing.

I will never crack jokes like “eating you alive” again – I’ll promise! This is disgusting… and now my appetite is definitively gone.

Notice that I DO NOT intend to create a negative view on Thai people nor do I want to stir up prejudices against them! I could not trust my eyes either and I did not want to believe this since personally I used to have a very fair impression of them!

You know about pack animals? Right, we can define this term as followed: “An amalgamation of certain mammals that consists of more than two animals living in the wild. The next major animal community is called a pod.”

Of course there is no talk of real animals living in their animal kingdom. I just make use of this term because it nicely illustrates the way of how Vietnamese teens behave. Probably you met them somewhere already. Preferably they like to stroll in packs of at least 10 “individuals” through various shopping malls. But in cases of nearly ceremonial occasions the impression of “viet pod” is more appropriate. If you watch this video you might get an impression of what I mean:

… blockading public toilettes at McDonalds:

It seems like they do not have the slightest feeling of pudency at all, do they??! At least I do when seeing some of them… I really do!

Besides of their Asian appearance you can easily identify them by the following characteristics:

… always extremely – yeah, call it fashionable.

I know Koreans and Japanese and all other Asians are fashionable as well but still they dress themselves a different way. Therefor it is not very difficult for me to determine who is Vietnamese and who is not because one can easily recognize them by the clothes they wear. As a Vietnamese you can see that. (A Russian girl told me that she can determine who is Russian too as well as the Italian girl I met in London. She could tell me who looked like real Italian by simply scanning the clothes and style.)

Even though there aren’t any special occasions at all they like to sex up themselves with high heels, big bags (both boys and girls) and pretty swashbuckling  hairstyles (which mostly holds true for boys). Everytime I go to Vietnamese supermarkets (you know, these really huge ones that are rather storage depots) in order to replenish my fridge with the most delicious things you can ever imagine I always meet some of those odd “spicemens.” Okay… when seeing this 14 year-old girl wearing that mini-dress, high heels and shiny clutch bag there is one question crossing my mind: Honey, you are surrounded by warehouses, plastic chairs, tables, parking cars and bin bags. Furthermore you don’t even have boobs yet or something! So why the hell do you dress up like that on a Sunday??? The same is true for your male buddies standing in a half circle and nudging each other. Boy, how much time did you spend in front of the mirror to make your hair look like this? And finally WHAT FOR?

… sedulously taking pictures of themselves wherever they go.

During my Christmas holidays my friend and me we went to a Vietnamese student super-duper x-mas party. Normally we stay clear of such azn events but sometimes we just feel the need of going there because we take great delight in watching the people! OMFG! It felt like years but after bravely trudging through the boring so called programme (karaoke, karaoke, karaoke contest and so not funny interactive games with the audience…) the two moderators announced to “nhay dittco” (Vietnamese impression for having a rave-up). So this was our signal for at least having a little fun there. Me and my friend we started cutting up the dance floor as soon as they played an aweful Wham-cover of “Last Christmas.” This was not really our kind of music but we did not care, though. Honestly, you should have seen the faces of the other Vietnamese guys… They starred at us as if we just arrived from nuthouse! Other than the likes of us they rather busied themselves with taking hundreds of stylicious-cutilicious azn pics. And of course they would not “dance” like us as they are far to sexy – I am sure we must have looked like aliens!

For those of you who are not familiar with Vietnamese internet communities: Did you even know they exist at all?  asiancy.de is probably the most popular German site. (Notice that you need to be registered before you are allowed to enter the full page.) I have to admit I used to make fun of those kids who have nothing else to do than taking photos of themselves (all of these somewhat look alike) demonstrating how fashion-victimized, fresh and “creativ” they are. Therefor PhotoShop is an indespensable tool for perfect self-projection. Indeed this really bugs me since my younger brother slightly tends to be one of them. (Long, don’t worry! I will save you!)

Actually it is not really this self-display thingy which is a true pain in the arse since it is a widely-spread phenomena among young people . It does not matter of which nationality they are since in times of preceding web 2.0 everyone is involved. What I want to point out is the fact of inceasing superficiality accompanied by decreasing social skills and an only partly completed integration.

Unfortunately some Vietnamese people tend to be superficial (like many other people in world). As the phrase goes “like father, like son.” So apparantly Vietnamese teens unconsiously inherited this from their parentel generation because they judge each other from the outside only. I once asked my brother and he told this became some kind of pear pressure or “doom loop” already because everyone knows each other. There is just one huuuuge clique, no room for non-azn friends. Sometimes I have this slight impression these kids also miss to focus on inner values. (Blaaah, I know it is always the same old story but it is true! Do not judge a book by its cover!) I talked to some of my brother’s friends a few times but unfortunately I did not really know what was the use of this conversation we had because it was far to superficial. No content. One of my best friends experienced the same when she was invited to a birthday party of her fellow student. They played Tabu ( You know this game where you have to explain a word without using certain Tabu-words.) and hardly anyone of them managed to explain a simple word like “fencing post.” Another time I was on my way back home and there were two Vietnamese boys in the tram talking to each other. Sorry but just I could not understand what the one of them was telling his buddy because every third word was either “dude”, “really wicked” or “…and stuff.”

Taking all these observations and experiences of mine into account makes me disappointedly realise that more than a few of Vietnamese teens are chic and vain concerning their appearance but pretty much let their intellectual input slide. I really do not mean to be smug and I am concious about me still being a bit infantile sometimes but… I know some guys who are round about my age and they are hanging arround with such Azn crowds only (average age is 16 or 17 ). They are far from being called adults since they behave like immature little children, having no idea of nothing.

In the end it is an individual desicion and I do not want to force my opinion upon others. But personally I do have the claim of giving and receiving. Friendship does not have anything to do with superficiality and quantity.  Thousands of viet connections and internet acquaintances are meaningless if they do not truly care about the person you are. No kidding, there are some kiddies outside there who are even aiming for as much connections as possible (expressed by a long list of telephone numbers and chat IDs…) because they are convinced to be somewhat famous then! Not a very worthwile achievement, though. I doubt whether anyone of those acquaintances would ever be there for you if you really do need some reliable help from a friend.

This is what I always keep telling to my brother. I know, I am not his mum but I hope he will understand.

I really like this one because it nicely combines both tradition with modern art.

Haha, she really takes the biscuit: