I think for most of the world people don't really care about these pageants. I will admit that I mostly don't care about them either but I'll tell ya, the people of Thailand really care about this and are super stoked that Suchata Chuangsri, whose nickname is "Opal" won 4th place in the 2024 pageant.
I know next to nothing about these competitions but I did find out that just being hot isn't enough to win them. You have to be smart and capable as well and that's when I found out that Opal is fluent in 3 languages and when I saw a clip of her speaking English I can tell that she is really well-educated.
Check that out if you want some sort of proof. Now she isn't completely without an accent but if you lived here and heard what most Thai people sound like when they are speaking English you would know that I am talking about. She has clearly worked very hard to not only understand the questions that are being asked of her, but to be able to come up with a coherent response in the language the question was asked in, right away.
Opal is also completely fluent, apparently, in Mandarin and Cantonese, which is something I know nothing about but presume it is extremely difficult.
When Opal returns to her native Phuket, she will be greeted with parades, probably be given a bunch of money by the government as well as the social and financial elites of Thailand. I don't know if this is a ploy to try to lure her into something but it won't be a small thing. A friend of mine was a teacher of a girl who simply became Miss Thailand for the pageant but didn't place very well in the global competition and they still gave her a $150,000 Mercedes, had multiple parades for her, and then she got lucrative deals on a Thai soap opera as well as promotional contracts with beauty products. She made a ton of money off of that and didn't even get into the top 20 globally so Opal will probably get significantly more.
I don't mean this in any sort of pervy way but just as a matter of fact. The bloodlines that lead to Thai women looking the way that they do is pretty darn unique and it is no surprise that for many people, they are considered some of the most beautiful people in the world. Don't get me wrong, there are beautiful people from everywhere, Thailand just seems to have an awful lot of it.
This is no rags to riches story though, Opal comes from money and probably doesn't even need the help that will be offered to her by winning 4th place in order to be successful. I'm not trying to denigrate her accomplishment in this pageant though, I am just pointing out that Thailand takes these things a lot more seriously than other countries would. Oh and Denmark won first place if anyone cares.