One Month in a Tropical Paradise: The Sad Truth That Nobody Talks About

The month of April marked one year since I started my writing career. And I celebrated it like any other serious writer would: I took one month off to recharge in a tropical paradise.

It’s been one of my dreams and I haven’t been anywhere tropical so far, so I wanted to explore my dream of sugar white sands, wild vegetation, and staring for hours into clear blue lagoons from under an exotic palm tree.

Add an orange sunset and some half-corny, half-sexy saxophone music to that and I’d want to live forever immersed in the sandy summery vibes of my 80s movie-themed tropical dream.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

Until I got there. And reality hit me like a big coconut fallen right on top of my naïve and overheated European head.

What exactly was the problem? To tell you the truth, apart from the stunning scenery, everything else was a problem.

But I can sum it up in one big fat seemingly entitled but sadly true word: ‘underdeveloped’. Tropical countries are underdeveloped. And if you’re coming from anywhere slightly more developed, that will bother you.

1. Everything is dirty.

Not sure if it’s the high humidity or the constant heat, or just a different culture that doesn’t require people and things to be clean, but everything is dirty. Everything you touch. Including yourself.

The streets are covered in thick dust.

The houses are rotting under the heat and wet air, and since there’s a lot of poverty, there’s no money to fix them.

People throw away their personal dirt and various debris (cucumbers, coffee, empty cans, you name it) from their balconies right down over your head.

The streets are flooded with putrid sewage water and rotting hot garbage.

The smell is atrocious.

And this nefarious bouquet of notes softly decomposing into the majestic tropical night sky is accompanied by one even stronger: the intoxicating aroma of burnt gas from the exhaust pipes of cars whose owners couldn’t care a lick about the environment or your dainty European nose.

2. The streets are filled with emaciated children and animals.

That was my number one problem. As a very empathic person, the utter poverty and need for help of the weak will break you.

If you can look away from the animals (cats, dogs, horses, oxen, and everything else) who are one day away from death by starvation and the children one day away from sexual abuse in exchange for a loaf of bread, then you’re in luck.

If you’re like me, you’ll spend nights crying and trying to contact as many animal organizations as possible. To no avail, they are already full of dying animals.

I’ve never seen such thin animals in my life. You couldn’t just count their ribs, but their skin was pulled so far back inside their emaciated bodies, that the sacral vertebra was protruding out grotesquely, like the caricature of the animal they intended to be.

They were dying of hunger, thirst, disease, and people’s brutality.

Something I never want to see again for the rest of my life.

3. Mosquitoes rule the land.

Not my personal experience, because mosquitoes and I have a mutually respectful relationship: they don’t bite me and I don’t kill them. If they break the rule I will too and I think they are the ones who have the most to lose.

Just kidding, they just don’t like my blood.

They probably can tell I’m bitter and the bitterness has already seeped into my blood, so they pass.

So if there are other people around, they’ll bite those. Over and over and over again.

My friends were constantly complaining, scratching their bumpy red legs and cursing every insect on the face of the earth.

If you think tropical-strength mosquito repellent will help, think again. They’re useless against these tiny tropical beasts and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Get ready to be eaten alive.

4. There is no medical care. Or anything else.

If you get sick, board the plane back to your home country. You might die on the plane, but if you stay there, you will die for sure.

As the guide informed us, he good doctors have already left the country to go somewhere less exotic but more reasonable in terms of a decent living.

And the hospitals will let you die there because other than hold your hand and understand your pain there’s not much they can do because they lack medicine, medical machinery, and supplies of all kinds.

They also lack fuel, cars, and fresh water. Do not drink the water there. You will spend your vacation days on the toilet.

You know what? You will anyway, but constant diarrhea will be the least of your problems if you drink the water.

5. They are highly reliant on tourism, so… on you.

And you’ll feel that. Again, you might be the kind of person who just accepts the world the way it is and can look away from people’s suffering.

No judgment there, I wish I was like you.

But for me, it was heartbreaking to see people coming to me asking for help and knowing I can’t help. And what’s worse, I was there to have a good time, while people, children, and animals were dying of starvation, thirst, and disease.

People will insist on selling you their products, begging for money, pushing their child in front of you to… god knows why.

They are poor and have been poor for generations. They see you as their chance to eat tonight. Or buy medicine for their dying wife.

That’s a burden that was difficult for me to carry.

I was in a group of 23 people with higher or lower emotional detachment. And one by one, they were all broken by the harsh realities of this beautiful but cruel land.

That land is Cuba. A country with a heavy past and a painful present, where communism has taken a severe toll on resources, finance, and culture.

The buildings of once beautiful Havana look like they just got out of a gruesome war and fierce bombardment. Some are missing roofs, others have huge holes in their walls and none of them still has color or plaster on the front.

Because of utter poverty, climate change, and international conflict, there is a fuel shortage and water shortage. A doctor earns around $30 a month.

They’re a totalitarian country whose only valid source of a decent income is tourism.

The people I was with also traveled to exotic places like Zanzibar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Egypt, or Morocco.

They told me that the animal situation is similar, even worse in Morocco and Egypt, where the general population severely abuses all animals, regardless of their status as pets, live stock or street animals. No mercy.

With the children, it’s possibly worse.

In Thailand, the sexual exploitation of very young children and underage girls and women is visible in the street and there is a lot of sexual tourism with exactly this purpose in mind.

If you can handle it emotionally, visit.

If you’re like me, don’t put yourself through hell for some turquoise waters.

Either go directly to a resort and shelter yourself from the pain, or visit the already developed countries and send money to help the rest.

As a lesson for me and other snowflakes, if from now on I want to enjoy my travels rather than be emotionally broken by them, I’ll stick to Europe, America, Australia, and New Zealand.

What about you? Have you been anywhere so sad that you wouldn’t go again even if they paid you to?

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