Republica Dominicana
I am back from my week long vacation in the D.R. My husband and I were staying at what was practically a palace nestled into one of the poorest countyside's I have ever seen. We did the all-inclusive thing, which (for us) can get a little boring. The resort was about an hour and a half away from anything, so you had to get into the back of a safari truck (open with bars) and get pelted in the face by wasps as you drove through banana plantations on a "road" to get to the scuba diving and anything else you wanted to do. We went out one day for the speed boat and snorkelling trip. After the wasps and the roads I was pretty much ready for anything. One thing I noticed (impossible not too), was how poor the people of the Dominican are. They literally live in tin shacks and have nothing. As we and the other rich white tourists drove through their neighborhoods, the people on the bus happily snapped pictures of the inhabitants and their homes. I felt like a little embarrassed. We cancelled the next trip and just stayed on the resort.
It's not guilt or pity that I felt necessarily, it was some kind of shame. Because as many times as I heard the loud drunken tourists on the resort comfort themselves and eachother by saying: "Hey, if we didn't come here and feed our money into their economy, they would have nothing." I knew that this was not the case. The land, the hotel, all of it- is not owned by anyone in that country. It is owned by a corporation in the U.S., and all the money that they make gets funneled right back out of the country. The only thing the workers have is their meager salary and the tips that they make. Rarely did I see people tipping there.
You get stuck with a lot of drunks too. These are the people that are at the bar at 10 in the morning and don't pass out until dinner time. They are loud, obnoxious, and treat the staff like shit.
Suffice it to say that we would not do an all-inclusive again. We are also very happy and very lucky to be living in a country like Canada. Home sweet home.
I'll write more later, but for now it's time to catch up on work. Ugh.
Office Girl.
It's not guilt or pity that I felt necessarily, it was some kind of shame. Because as many times as I heard the loud drunken tourists on the resort comfort themselves and eachother by saying: "Hey, if we didn't come here and feed our money into their economy, they would have nothing." I knew that this was not the case. The land, the hotel, all of it- is not owned by anyone in that country. It is owned by a corporation in the U.S., and all the money that they make gets funneled right back out of the country. The only thing the workers have is their meager salary and the tips that they make. Rarely did I see people tipping there.
You get stuck with a lot of drunks too. These are the people that are at the bar at 10 in the morning and don't pass out until dinner time. They are loud, obnoxious, and treat the staff like shit.
Suffice it to say that we would not do an all-inclusive again. We are also very happy and very lucky to be living in a country like Canada. Home sweet home.
I'll write more later, but for now it's time to catch up on work. Ugh.
Office Girl.
posted by vegan mum at 10:01 AM
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