I was just talking to her for about ten minutes or so and suddenly
she took my arm and pulled it right next to her own. She made a sad
face. “White”, she said while pointing on mine and then “Black”, while
pointing on her own arm. Right, it immediately reminded me of “Tarzan”
and “Jane”, like a definite statement that is a clear fact. I said to
her “Your skin isn’t black, it’s rather brown, just some nice tan and it
looks very beautiful!”. She goes:
“Why Farang always like dark skin?”
It’s the kind of conversation not just me has held a hundred times
here, similar to other popular topics like why are Farang so big and
Thai people so small where I usually reply that Thai people and
especially children don’t drink as much milk as westerners (which is
kind of changing these days with those small 200ml milk bottles with
different flavors selling quite well at 7-eleven at 12 Baht and even
pretties promoting them in schools and offices). Similar popular is the
question “why is it always so hot in Thailand”, when they see the snow
or how people dress in Farangland in movies or in the news.
But let’s focus on today’s topic. It’s obvious if you look at the foreigner-oriented beer bars all over the country – the majority of girls have a tan and there’s two reasons for this.
First reason: Most westerners are attracted to
tanned girls because of the shortage of tanned girls back home. At home,
most girls have white skin (cooler climate) unless they run to the
solarium several times a week and humans naturally find things more
attractive that are special and not so common in their natural
environment. Therefore, dark skinned Thai women seem more attractive to
us because the majority of women in our home country do not have tan skin.
Second reason: In Thai society, light skin is a sign
of prosperity since if you have enough money, you can stay inside all
day and don’t have to work out in the heat while being exposed to the
sun. As opposed to people upcountry working on the farms naturally have
darker skin. Hence, it’s mainly those tanned girls from the poor
families of the countryside who are working in the entertainment
industry.
Very important side note: We are talking about the farang-oriented sex industry here. If you compare it with the girls who are working in the massage parlors
or gentlemen clubs and cater to Thai and Asian clientele – these girls
are white skinned as that’s what the locals find attractive, again they
feel more attracted to them because white skinned girls are less common
and thus more special than dark skinned girls. But then their price tag
is also significantly higher than the one of girls in the beer bars!
Now what I found for myself, the longer I was living in Bangkok, the
more I felt attracted to the light skin girls and I’m sure my preference
slowly changed for the same reason: Light skin girls are less common
here than tanned girls and thus more desirable and special. But at the
same time I also learned that it’s more fun and more convenient to hang
out with dark skin Thai girls. Let me explain this to you with my own
personal experiences.
My light skinned girlfriend
Early last year I have had enough of meeting girls in the bars and nightclubs for one night stands and even the dating sites didn’t do it for me anymore. I’ve met about 10-15 girls within the first two months of the year mainly using Thai Friendly, not sure maybe I was picking too sexy girls, it usually turned out they had no interest in meeting me for the second time. No joke, I think they were just looking to fuck around but definitely not keen on having any kind of relationship.What I was looking for was a girlfriend that I spent most of the nights of the week with since I was tired of hooking up with a new girl every week.
Then one day in late February I went to Central Lad Phrao with a good friend of mine back then, a widowed Bangkok girl with a 8-year old daughter in her early 30ies who works as a branch manager for several locations of True Coffee in Bangkok. So we went to their branch in Central Lad Phrao where she had to do some supervising or something like that.
Immediately when we walked into the cafe my eyes fell on her: She had relatively big and charming brown eyes, bleached shoulder long hair, fairly tall (1.73m as I learned later), white skin and thin but not skinny. She completely ignored my appearance. Well there were four other employees as well so what did I expect. She was beautiful, Thai style beautiful and the type that usually doesn’t look or smile at Farangs.
My friend immediately noticed that I was more or less starring at her, smiled and said: “sǔai mǎi (สวยไหม – beautiful?) Her name is Gik, she is from Khon Kaen and works here for two weeks as a trainee to learn everything and take a test.” Before I could say anything she quickly went over and asked her to introduce herself to me. So we did some small talk, I asked her about her name, where she was from, about her job etc. It turned out she was 26 and had been working as a model for the past ten years and done a Bachelor degree in communication at the Khon Kaen University.
My friend intervened and asked if she had a boyfriend yet and she said not yet and so my friend was like oh so you guys can exchange numbers. We all laughed but that’s what we did and I was grateful for my Thai friend to help me in this situation as I felt it would have been nearly impossible to approach her on my own. She didn’t speak much English by the way, so all our conversations were in Thai, including writing messages on the phone.
A couple of hours after I left the cafe I wrote to her if she had plans for tonight and invited her to watch a movie at Central Rama 9 (we were both staying in that area, me in an apartment and she together with a friend in a hotel). She said “dâai” (ได้ – can) and there I had my first date with a real beautiful white skinned Thai girl I was always dreaming of from the day I started to learn Thai. And even better, I was her first Farang to date.
The movie was okay, even though I couldn’t concentrate on watching the story too much as I was thinking about what would happen after. Not that much actually, I brought her to the hotel and that was it. I held her hand as we walked which was a good start. I didn’t even try and invite her to my room that night. A few days later we went to the cat cafe in Thong Lor which she loved, took lots of pics and uploaded and tagged us on facebook. This time I asked her if she wanted to hang out at my place for a while but she said no, that would be too quick. I understood and was even happy that I found a girl who seemed to have a good character.
On our third date we went to a local restaurant in Huai Kwang with a friend of hers who picked us up with the car and this was the first time I wasn’t 100% happy – they were using the impolite pronouns “guu” and “mueng” amongst others when talking to each other. That’s usually not a big deal among very good friends but I still didn’t like that rude way of talking. And then it also turned out they were both good drinkers (dʉ̀ʉm lâo gèng – ดื่มเหล้าเก่ง – good at drinking alcohol), we ordered a few beers for the dinner and it wasn’t me who drunk the most.
I didn’t care much at that point and invited her again to come to my apartment that night. This time she said okay and so her friend dropped us there while repeatedly telling me to take care of her. We watched some Thai TV and she spent the whole night with me – but she didn’t take off her clothes even while sleeping. She was very strict and I didn’t urge her to do anything since all I wanted at that time was a relationship with a beautiful Thai girl. And I was on the right track.
