...but not only that...

Patrick Chesneau, a columnist in various Facebook groups about Thailand and also for the online newspaper Gavroche en Thaïlande, recently wrote the following:

THAILAND: SKIN-DEEP SENSUALITY

SO MANY EXQUISITE CHARMS COME TOGETHER IN THESE ORCHID-LIKE CREATURES.
FOR NEARLY FORTY YEARS THEY HAVE OVERWHELMED ME.
MY HEART CAPSIZES
MY SOUL SWELLS.
SIAMESE MELANCHOLY AND ORIENTAL AMAZEMENT.

ASIAN WOMEN ARE SO BEAUTIFUL!

I STILL CAN’T GET OVER IT...

This cry from the heart was commented on in different ways. Some applauded, some wrote that they disagreed, one even going so far as to write that barely 20% of Thai women are beautiful, some wrote that there were just as many beautiful women in every country, and some, including one woman in particular who seems rather bitter, insisted on the superficiality of these women, the impossibility of having a discussion with them, and the fact that love was not satisfied with looks alone.

In short, I have an opinion on the subject, and I’m going to give it to you.

The looks of Thai women

I did an experiment because I had the same feeling as Patrick Chesneau, but I wanted to know if it was "objective".
Before my last trip back to France, I went for a walk in Thailand in various places, and as I’m very contemplative, I travel in slow mode, and often sit down for a long time to observe the people, the streets, the architecture, the social life, I observed, took notes and wrote down some statistics. I walked around the following places:

• Bangkok’s upmarket districts (Sukhumvit)
• Bangkok Khao San Road
• Bangkok’s poor suburbs (Bang Bua Thong)
• Hua Hin
• Chiang Mai and surrounding area
• Isan (towns and villages)
• Pattaya
• Various villages

All this obviously spread over several months.
I counted (it’s probably simplistic) with the following "method":
This morning, I look at the first 50 women I meet and I "evaluate" them with all my subjectivity of course and without wanting to give them a nasty label even though it’s obviously anonymous and they won’t know anything about it.

1. rather not too beautiful
2. ordinary
3. rather pretty
4. very pretty
5. love at first sight

I enjoyed doing this for several days, at least once in each of the places I visited.

And when I went to France for 2 months, I did the same thing. As I did a lot of travelling to see family and friends, I also went to a variety of places, towns, villages, seaside resorts, mountains, in France, Germany and Spain.

I had limited myself to women who ’seemed’ (still subjective) to be between 20 and 60.

The ’statistics’ (once again, very empirical) are indisputable

And I feel sorry for European women

There is a HUGE difference. Enormous, to say the least. Because Thai women are overwhelmingly slim and with balanced proportions.

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

At this point in this article, it’s useful for me to explain what I appreciate, and especially what I hate, in a woman. And I don’t care if I get called sexist.

I like slim women (and men too, for that matter). Coming from a family where we naturally tend to be rather strong, I make an effort not to put on (too much) weight and to keep my figure without excessive curves, especially around the stomach.

So I like slim people, and I also like women who don’t have a look that I’d describe as vulgar (it’s all very subjective):

• No tattoos
• No piercings
• Natural hair colour
• Discreet make-up
• Long hair
• Thin line
• Little or no jewellery

Although there are many jewellery shops in Thailand, selling almost exclusively gold jewellery, the Thais wear VERY LITTLE jewellery. Most don’t wear rings, earrings, necklaces or bracelets. Some wear a little jewellery, but again it’s very discreet: a small ring, rarely more. When they do wear earrings, it’s almost always a small, discreet model. Ditto for the few who sport a gold chain.

Photo by Mathias Huysmans on Unsplash

In short, what you almost never see in Thailand is a woman with a ring on each finger, huge earrings, 3 or 4 chains or necklaces around her neck, 10 bracelets on each hand, all this hardware that makes an unbearable noise as soon as she moves a hand on a table.

Thai women wear make-up, they even spend a lot of time doing it, and they have all the necessary products. But I don’t know how they do it, the make-up manages to highlight their delicate features without ever being excessive. Which means that, whatever their age, they always look younger.

I’ve yet to see one (except in certain very specific circles) with huge layers of mascara in an unlikely colour, very bright blue, pink, etc.

The same goes for hair colours. Thai people have naturally black hair, and the vast majority keep it that way. Some have streaks of bleached hair, or an overall colour, but they have the good taste to keep their hair fairly close to jet black: often shades of red or very dark chestnut. It’s very rare to come across a peroxide blonde, or a woman with the kind of piss-white/yellow hair so popular with Europeans who were lucky enough to be born brunettes, especially after the age of 50.

Another very charming feature of Thai women is their long hair. Because it’s hot, they often tie their hair up, especially during the day when they’re working, and less so in the evening when they’re going out. To do this, they use various techniques, some of which are completely out of fashion in Europe and particularly in France, but so charming nonetheless:

• Black or coloured ribbons
• Mats
• Braids
• Quilts
• All kinds of fancy clips or headbands

A shark on your head

In everyday life, Thai women usually dress very simply (jeans, teeshirt). They don’t overdo it, and many can’t afford designer clothes, but they look good and are always elegant.

Photo by Chun-ja Bustamante on pexels.com

Older Thai women tend for the most part, as in all countries, to adopt shorter haircuts as their hair loses vigour, but here too a very large majority accept the law of nature by letting the natural grey take over.

There are many tattoo parlours in Thailand, but paradoxically, there are proportionally far more farangs (non-Asian foreigners) with tattoos than Thais. The vast majority of Thai people have little or no tattooing. Most of the time, it’s discreet. But some Thai people have a whole arm full of tattoos, and I don’t know if that means anything special to them. It’s rare. And in any case, successful or unsuccessful tattoos look much better on tanned, matt or coloured skin than on pink or very white skin.

Of course, there are exceptions to all these points. I’ve already come across Thai women with piercings (rare), tattoos all over their bodies (a little less rare), an abundance of jewellery (extremely rare), very wrapped up (yes, you come across them every day), and frankly obese (it’s quite rare, so you notice them, whereas in Europe, particularly in France, it’s become commonplace).

In any case, I’ve yet to come across a Thai woman with tattoos, piercings, too much make-up, dripping with jewellery and red or orange hair.

In short, vulgarity has been spared in this country for the time being, and so much the better.

To return to the title of this article, it’s hard not to exclaim every 5 minutes as you walk down the street, whatever the town, village or neighbourhood: "Oh, how pretty that girl is!

It’s a constant feast for the eyes, and Patrick Chesneau is quite right.

But what about the intellect?

Another argument for denigrating Thai women was raised on this Facebook discussion, in particular by this woman who explained that married life couldn’t be based on looks alone, and that being in a couple with a Thai woman meant sharing nothing intellectually or culturally, having no shared values, and so on.

Of course, we won’t necessarily be discussing the latest performance of Swan Lake at the Opéra Garnier (although we will), but there are many other subjects for cultural and intellectual discussion. On the one hand, mixed marriages bring 2 cultures face to face, and it’s an opportunity for each of the 2 to introduce the other to his or her culture, national holidays, monuments, way of life, and so on.

On the other hand, before casting aspersions on Thai women by reducing them to their looks, we should be looking not at Franco-Thai couples, or more broadly Farang-Thai couples, who fail, but rather at those who last.

Why do these marriages hold up? Probably because there’s something in it for everyone:

Thai women find both financial and emotional security. There are a lot of single women in Thailand after the age of forty. Quite simply because they have often kicked the father of their children out of the house. Because Thai men tend to be rather lazy and drink quite a lot. They’re the ones who say it, it’s not a judgement on my part.

Khmer culture is historically matriarchal, but the downside is that men tend to leave everything to women, and many of them take it easy. It’s not uncommon to see a man sleeping in a hammock behind a street food stall while his wife works hard because there are so many customers.

After a while, Thai women get fed up with this, especially when their husbands spend the money they’ve struggled to earn on whisky and/or cheat on them assiduously.

So these single women, whatever their age, simply don’t want a Thai husband any more, and they’re "looking" for a farang.

The farang meets a brave, hard-working woman who, in exchange for financial security, will "look after" him. She will take great care of the house, cook, most of the time very well, obviously be physically ’available’, even if this expression may shock, and be very undemanding.

I have the feeling, from what I’ve observed, read, listened to and also experienced, that Thai women have a greater ability than others to ’separate’ sex and feelings. And this undoubtedly greatly simplifies their married life.

Clearly, it seems unlikely that a very pretty young woman of 25 will fall madly in love with a farang of 50 (the gap can be much greater), especially if this naiad is courted by a monster of more than 120 kilos for 1m70, a great lover of beer and hideous tattoos. And there are plenty of farangs like that in Thailand.

But in exchange for the financial AND love stability she’s looking for, she’ll accept this and give him a lot.

Coming back to exchanges, one of the big ’advantages’ of Thai women over most Western women is that these exchanges will be simple if both parties’ needs are respected.

Thai women can have ONE big fault: they can be very jealous. But apart from that, and to put it bluntly, compared to many Western women, they are not ... BAD.

This certainly has something to do with the Buddhist religion, which is very much in the majority in the country. Thai women are rather fatalistic, what happens was bound to happen, and you can’t get angry over a broken glass or a faded piece of clothing.

They don’t split hairs all the time, and don’t spend their days making little comments like "why did you do that? or "why didn’t you do that?

Generally speaking, they don’t spend all day talking and don’t like it when people talk too much. They often have an expression in English to make you understand that you talk too much: "big mouth".

In short, Thai women are captivating, beautiful and good-natured. What more could you ask for?

To finish this too long article, I suggest you observe a small group that is the perfect image of everything we can appreciate in Thai women:

Thailand Volleyball Team 2023

I’ve been watching a lot of matches this year.

What are we seeing?

There is a tendency in all countries to say about female volleyball players that they are beautiful women.

BUT

• There are more beautiful women in the Thai team than in any other.
• Many of the players in the world’s best teams are very tall and very athletic, but often too much so, and they don’t have as much charm.
• The Thai women, even if they play at a good world level (they beat the French team this year, for example), are not super-muscular giants. They have slender features and bodies and are very thin compared to the others.

But above all, their attitude on the pitch is very different.

For example, the Brazilian team, which relies on a number of physical "monsters" and in particular their star player Gabi, has the following characteristic attitude that can be found in almost all the teams:

When a player scores a point, she smiles and generally shouts out her joy, which she shares with her partners. But when she misses a smash or is countered, a player like Gabi has murderous eyes, you get the impression that she could kill someone in an instant, or she makes the same face as if she’d just buried her grandmother.

On the other hand

When a Thai woman scores a point, she rejoices, often shouts, laughs and congratulates herself and her partners as if she had just scored the final point of the world championship, but above all, when she makes a mistake, she apologises with a smile, and the others cheer her on with even bigger smiles.

The Thai team is certainly the fairest in the world, never cheating, always positive in all circumstances, and yet defeats are not rare.

Yes, definitely, as Patrick Chesneau writes:

ASIAN WOMEN ARE BEAUTIFUL

and I would add

LIFE IS SWEET IN THAILAND

I hope it lasts...