That's consistent with what I've heard and seen. An acquaintance Mr. Megatop and I spent a bit of time hanging out with in HKG in May 2004 (we've stayed in touch since, but time is pertinent to my point) is an American-born Filipino. His boyfriend is a British executive with a worldwide hotel chain. They moved to HKG from the US in 2003. When we met then, the GAM half of the couple was kind of bored with HKG. While the GWM half was busily working (mostly on-site in HKG), the GAM half was slowly settling into a job he didn't seem to care much about. He felt like he'd had a hard time meeting people in the nine months or so they'd lived there. At that point, he wanted to do the two-year stint and move on to someplace else--Australia or Europe. At the same time, he was just settling in to a group of friends. Many of them were HKG-born Chinese (some of whom had lived abroad) and expats, and they all seemed to move in an expat circle. In May 2004, the GAM half was ripped, evidently spending a great deal of time in the gym-- the one popular with The Gays in Hollywood Road just off the escalator. Seven months later, they met us in Bangkok with four other couples from Hong Kong, most mixed but one GAM-GAM. The GAM fellow had changed his tune: he'd met a nice circle of friends and felt comfortable staying in HKG longer. And he surely wasn't as ripped as he had been when we met. Still gorgeous and in great shape, but plainly spending more time with friends and less time in the gym. Unfortunately, it took him more like a year to break in. It's a note of caution every time I entertain the fanciful idea of moving to Hong Kong.

On the Thai and Japanese issue that kind of got started but wasn't really discussed much... in my experience (much more extensive in Thailand than Japan), Thais tend to be warm and welcoming to farang while Japanese GAMs tend to be somewhat insular, preferring fellow Japanese over gaijin. That's consistent with the general cultural norms in both Thailand and Japan, of course.