Dubai was hot and expensive. The seemingly endless luxury affects one in a certain way. You want to experience it yourself, not having to worry about the costs, just buying and consuming whatever you want. At the same time, when you listen to the workers, you hear stories that show a different side. We had a conversation with a father of two children who earns only 40 Swiss Francs a day and can only see his family for 4 weeks a year. A large portion of these people had no work during the pandemic and had to return to their home countries, to India, Pakistan, or Sri Lanka. Throughout our entire five days, there was always this theme, this spirit of money in the air, and then, two times, something went wrong with booking tickets for these tourist attractions. That really annoyed me... Of course, we had many cool experiences, the typical tourist attractions...
In Bangkok, we first had to deal with jetlag. We had booked a boat tour through the various canals of the city. During that, we saw poverty up close. In the evening, we walked past beggars, including mothers, children, and a man without legs who was simply lying on the sidewalk. This deeply touched the children. In the evening, we took a lot of time to talk to the boys about it. Our oldest has a very sensitive heart and would rather look away. It scares him, and it will take some time for him to find his way to deal with it. The other two somehow fell into a delirium of wanting to make the world better and help. They now want to buy containers of food with their children's business and buy seeds to grow food for all the hungry people. Of course, we are on this trip to experience such things and grow from them. But when the time comes, it is not easy to explain to the children how to handle it when you are not entirely sure yourself what the right approach to the poverty laying at your feet looks like.
Today, we also faced some challenges, which we will describe another time. But now we are sitting in our beautiful hotel room that we booked and celebrated Liisa's 41st birthday in a nice restaurant. We bought ourselves better circumstances, and we have almost forgotten the mother with the three children who sleeps under the stairs.
Isn't that crazy?
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