Clutch Cargo wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2023 9:29 am

In what world is it considered beautiful to bear a passing ressemblance to a bit of tuktuk ?

And though the Khmer costume is interesting and creative as an idea, it looks like an instrument of torture for the wearer. Miss Grand Cambodia, you say ?

she looks like a transformer- the cartoon

Contestants don’t look Cambodian, it’s a shame with all the beautiful women in country.

Maybe we cannot see the forest for the trees?

Example: if you are American or European, your local partner will inevitably become Westernized in many ways you don't notice all the time ...in big ways.

The locals got "so upset" when one of the Cambodian lady beauty queen contestants sang a "Thai" song onstage. What is so upsetting about that? A lot of popstars in Asia could get a lot bigger if it would occur to them to sing in English, maybe... My point is, there is so much petty baggage between Asians in countries close to each other that they cannot dump. The petty racist nonsense never ends, and it's largely down to linguistic and social isolation. Only Cambodians who go outside of Cambodia truly change their perspective into something larger and more understanding. I saw the same thing only even more pronounced in Taiwan, which is a truly insular place...

As to the Chinese influence in Cambodia. For better or worse, it is nothing new. Chinese have been in, uhmmm, "Indochina" far longer than the French. For a long time Vietnam used Chinese writing before that French priest redid their writing.

Look around the rest of the region. The Philippines was ruled by the Dutch, the Spanish and local conquerors from the neighborhood, too. The Tagalog language is a curious mixture of several European tongues and local island dialects...

The melange of cultures in Asia is a constantly revolving process... Don't complain about the Chinese -- because they were here first. I know gangsters are irritating and they have had a bad effect on the personality of many Cambodian people. But not all Chinese are gangsters!

And also -- if she doesn't look Cambodian, what does she look like!? Can you climb off your need to make up malarkey for a change?