Okay. This is not a new story. It’s been experienced over and over by many a person, including myself on more than a few occasions. I have for the most part withheld on writing about this sort of thing, but for some reason tonight I’m especially irritated/disappointed, so here goes:

I teach English at a university. Mainly I teach freshmen and sophomores, but I also have a class in the evening which is more or less like that of a private institute - it is composed primarily of businesspeople. Anyway, tonight was the final class of the session, so we decided to go to a fried pork (삼겹살) restaurant. My overall impression of this class is that they are a good group of people and we were having a good time. But then the alcohol started to flow.

To be fair, this story is only about one particular individual. Someone who struck me as a pretty nice guy. Until we finished our dinner and went to a bar, that is. The group started off with a few drinking games. Innocent enough. After about twenty minutes, someone suggested that we stop and have some conversation. Good idea. Or so I thought.

Out of the blue, the guy asked me, “Have you ever been to Thailand?” I told him that I’ve been there three times. “I really like that country,” he said. Then suddenly, “But I couldn’t understand why the men there just look.” I asked him what he meant. He continued, “So many white guys walk around with Thai girls. I can’t understand why the Thai men just look. I was really disappointed in them.”

“Christ. Here we go,” I thought. I’ve been confronted with this sort of thing before and have learned that there’s nothing to be gained from any sort of in-depth conversation on the topic. I don’t know - maybe I’m a bastard, but when this sort of topic comes up I tend to take the mocking “well your shit stinks too” tack. “What do you mean ‘white men’? There are plenty of Japanese and Korean men who meet Thai girls too,” I answered. “Oh, no,” he said, and I asked him if he was familiar with Pattaya. He just smiled the smile of someone who knew that I was on to his game. I decided to toss one more subtle jab in his direction, “You know, if my sister were to date someone from another country, I really wouldn’t care. As long as he was a nice guy. I really can’t understand why someone would care what race a person is or what country he’s from.” That was the end of the conversation.

If the point the guy was trying to make had been sex tourism, I wouldn’t have had a problem with what he said. But that’s not what he was getting at. His problem was that foreign (read: white) men were dating Thai women and to him the natural reaction was to be pissed off about it. And the fact that Thai men weren’t pissed off disgusted him.

As I said at the start of this rant, this sort of experience here is quite common. Enough so that people tend to lump everyone into the same racist group. Personally, I try very hard to abide by the philosophy of accepting individuals as good people until they give me reason not to. However, this guy has been added to a unfortunately growing list.

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