A few years ago Garuda was short crew so they took on some expats and was paying expat wages. This caused a sh#t storm with local crew and all the expats either had to leave or take a local package.
I think most SE Asian airlines don't mind hiring expats on expat packages but the local pilots have a huge problem with this. They see it as having jobs stolen from locals. This forces many to offer local terms only to expats which only seems to attract the odd free and single guy looking for adventure or end of the line fired from all other job desperates.