Xinyu Wen traveled to Thailand in June, planning a two-week vacation around Bangkok’s Pride parade. But the 28-year-old ended up staying a month and a half, soaking up the Thai capital’s thriving LBGTQ+ community.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
At home, Wen said she regularly gets judgmental stares on the street for wearing her hair short like a man’s, and was once asked by her barber: “What happened to your life?”
More than that, she said she was also impressed by the protest element to the event, in which people carried signs written in traditional Chinese with slogans like “China has no LGBTQ” and “Freedom is what we deserve.”
“Although I initially had a critical attitude toward the parade in Bangkok because discrimination against LGBTQ individuals hasn’t disappeared, I still felt inspired because the neglected groups and the suppressed feelings matter here.”
Thailand Tourism Authority official Apichai Chatchalermkit said in an Aug. 9 article in The Nation newspaper that LGBTQ+ tourists are considered “high-potential” as they tend to spend more and travel more frequently than other visitors.
Being gay is not illegal in China, though other Asian countries have strict laws around homosexuality — such as Malaysia, which announced in August that anyone in possession of an LGBTQ±themed watch could be jailed for 3 years.
The 28-year-old, who works in the television industry, first visited Thailand four years ago and remembers being shocked to hear people talk casually about their same-sex partners.
The original article contains 935 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Black people in America should try this too.
@Blursty I don’t understand what you mean.
Travel the world and experience what it’s like to be free and not living in a white supremacist state that hates your existence. Living in constant fear of being arbitrarily murdered by the militarised police or being sent to the prison labour camps on sentences that aren’t applied to white people etc.
@Blursty There is quite a lot of Black American tourism to Liberia, maybe that’s an example of what you are talking about.
Is there really? I don’t know anything about that, good for them to experience some freedom.
Liberia was founded by Black Americans. It even uses the US Dollar
Yes, Liberia was colonized by freed slaves from America, and their descendants formed a power elite there until the civil wars.
It’s a fascinating history. At one point America had to step in because Britain wanted to investigate reports that the ex-slaves were massacring some of the local African population.
Cool. There’s a lot of place they could go to escape American persecution.
