Tuesday, August 05, 2025

Why is the Philippines hated so much by fellow Southeast Asian countries?

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Anonymous

Indonesia and Malaysia? Nope. They kinda hate-love each other, but they don’t hate the Philippines. Maybe the trash talk in online games, but everyone does that.

Thailand and Vietnam’s cultures are too different, and the language barrier too high, to really bother much with Island Southeast Asia.

Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar are too embroiled in their own problems and are somewhat isolationist.

East Timor is a friend and receives help from the Philippines.

Singapore on the other hand… they have a stereotype of Filipinos as maids, because most Filipinos in Singapore are maids. Thus they think the entire country are all just maids. There’s also always been a strong undercurrent of xenophobia in Singapore against migrant workers. It’s a small country, thus more people coming in are seen as “taking away jobs”, even though they’re the ones hiring them.

I think ASEAN as a whole also has this misconception of the Philippines as being very poor or dangerous. A result of a combination of factors. Mostly confirmation bias from international media reporting only on things like the terrorism problems in a handful of islands in the far south, poverty porn, religious and cultural differences, the export of maids, and the fact that few have actually been to the Philippines. They see documentaries of the slums of Manila or the Abu Sayyaf terrorists in Sulu and think the entire country is like that.

To be fair, most Filipinos know very little about our ASEAN neighbors as well. The vast majority of the Filipino diaspora are in English-speaking western countries: US, UK, Australia, Canada, NZ. 

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