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> There is an underbelly (potentially foreigner driven, idk) of sex work, drugs etc. I can remember one woman being profiled in these "Americans are retiring a

> There is an underbelly (potentially foreigner driven, idk) of sex work, drugs etc. I can remember one woman being profiled in these "Americans are retiring abroad" stories. Usually it is a man and they are often married to a much younger local woman. They did not go there with a spouse.

toyg 5y ago
I ended up listening to a podcast for divorced men, and one guest was some sort of "seducer guru" who said literally "if you are a male westerner with a job, regardless of what you look like, you have value somewhere else in the world". Which is basically true, if slightly depressing when expressed in those terms.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  A friend of mine is an engineer in Ghana, but there aren't a lot of jobs, so he earns about $200 a month. He earns more money doing Mechanical Turk and surveys through a VPN. 30K a year is a fortune in many places.
alisonatwork 5y ago
I noticed this in China too. Older male expats with local wives or sex partners. Some of them were on their second or third local wife. There's a whole culture that develops around it of young women who make it a goal to try find a western husband, either for the money, or for the convenient foreign citizenship. Unfortunately this creates some resentment of expats amongst the local men, and gives expats in general a bit of a poor reputation.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Maybe a few decades ago? Today it is more like a rich old balding Shanghainese guy with a young Ukrainian model wife.
- notch656a 5y ago
  Maybe I'm jus non-traditional but I don't understand the poor reputation. Consensual relationship marriage, who cares why the parties consented so long as it wasn't done under force? It's hilarious going to a certain 3rd world country with my wife (where she was born). My wife is dual citizen (gained citizenship and good career before I met her) and makes more than I do. In this country impoverished women often marry rich westerners. When we go people assume I'm her sugar-daddy/visa-husband. The odd thing to me is I don't see our relationship as any more or less valid, who the fuck cares that we married for a different reason than someone else? Also in many nations marriage is as much about connections as it is anything else.
  - alisonatwork 5y ago
    In China there is already a gender imbalance in the favor of men thanks to the one child policy, which means straight young men can struggle to find a romantic partner. When older, richer foreigners come along and snap up local women - who are already in short supply - it definitely breeds resentment. Tangled up with that is the existing problem of human trafficking, where brides are shipped in from Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar etc. It's easy for an increasingly nationalistic culture to blame foreigners for exacerbating these issues.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      > It's easy for an increasingly nationalistic culture to blame foreigners for exacerbating these issues. But they are the ones who created the gender imbalance. It's completely self-imposed.
      - DangitBobby 5y ago
        Really? The 30-something Chinese guy who's delivered packages his whole life and has no impact on policy created this scenario?
    - notch656a 5y ago
      I can see how that is the case in China. My wife is from a country where there is no shortage of women. Probably 90% of the people speak passable English, so there is no language barrier. I don't see a lot of hostile resentment to be honest. The presumption is more of a practical and amusing one. Many of the villages are funded in part by remittance from US and this country was saved by US from literal mass rape by Japanese in WWII and unlike other countries we never seriously fucked them afterwards so the people overall are very cheery in dealing with Americans in my experience.
jccalhoun 5y ago
In the mornings I often watch a twitch streamer who goes to places in cities in Thailand and I'm always struck by all the old white men with young Thai women that she passes on the street.

toyg 5y ago

I ended up listening to a podcast for divorced men, and one guest was some sort of "seducer guru" who said literally "if you are a male westerner with a job, regardless of what you look like, you have value somewhere else in the world". Which is basically true, if slightly depressing when expressed in those terms.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
MattGaiser 5y ago
A friend of mine is an engineer in Ghana, but there aren't a lot of jobs, so he earns about $200 a month. He earns more money doing Mechanical Turk and surveys through a VPN. 30K a year is a fortune in many places.

alisonatwork 5y ago

I noticed this in China too. Older male expats with local wives or sex partners. Some of them were on their second or third local wife. There's a whole culture that develops around it of young women who make it a goal to try find a western husband, either for the money, or for the convenient foreign citizenship. Unfortunately this creates some resentment of expats amongst the local men, and gives expats in general a bit of a poor reputation.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Maybe a few decades ago? Today it is more like a rich old balding Shanghainese guy with a young Ukrainian model wife.
notch656a 5y ago
Maybe I'm jus non-traditional but I don't understand the poor reputation. Consensual relationship marriage, who cares why the parties consented so long as it wasn't done under force? It's hilarious going to a certain 3rd world country with my wife (where she was born). My wife is dual citizen (gained citizenship and good career before I met her) and makes more than I do. In this country impoverished women often marry rich westerners. When we go people assume I'm her sugar-daddy/visa-husband. The odd thing to me is I don't see our relationship as any more or less valid, who the fuck cares that we married for a different reason than someone else? Also in many nations marriage is as much about connections as it is anything else.
- alisonatwork 5y ago
  In China there is already a gender imbalance in the favor of men thanks to the one child policy, which means straight young men can struggle to find a romantic partner. When older, richer foreigners come along and snap up local women - who are already in short supply - it definitely breeds resentment. Tangled up with that is the existing problem of human trafficking, where brides are shipped in from Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar etc. It's easy for an increasingly nationalistic culture to blame foreigners for exacerbating these issues.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > It's easy for an increasingly nationalistic culture to blame foreigners for exacerbating these issues. But they are the ones who created the gender imbalance. It's completely self-imposed.
    - DangitBobby 5y ago
      Really? The 30-something Chinese guy who's delivered packages his whole life and has no impact on policy created this scenario?
  - notch656a 5y ago
    I can see how that is the case in China. My wife is from a country where there is no shortage of women. Probably 90% of the people speak passable English, so there is no language barrier. I don't see a lot of hostile resentment to be honest. The presumption is more of a practical and amusing one. Many of the villages are funded in part by remittance from US and this country was saved by US from literal mass rape by Japanese in WWII and unlike other countries we never seriously fucked them afterwards so the people overall are very cheery in dealing with Americans in my experience.

jccalhoun 5y ago

In the mornings I often watch a twitch streamer who goes to places in cities in Thailand and I'm always struck by all the old white men with young Thai women that she passes on the street.