About a year ago I traveled to the Dominican Republic with my family. The trip was very fun and I got to see a great comparison of 1st world and 3rd world living. I stayed in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic which was a major tourism city. Right outside of Punta Cana though was a very poor 3rd world country.
Flying into Dominican Republic I could see out the plane window the beautifully groomed beaches and palm trees and the large resorts of Punta Cana. The city looked like a paradise. Outside of that area though the geography of the island was very different. When I arrived on the island the same appearance divide was true. Inside the resort I stayed at, you would have never known that just a few miles away there were people living in tiny unfinished shacks. The resort was fabulous and filled with beautiful canopies, exotic birds, cocktail bars, and cute restaurants. The resort was everything someone from a 1st world country would expect. To me, the resort represented the blind ignorance of the 1st world to the problems of the 3rd world.
On my trip, I went on excursions ziplining and doing other fun activities in the interior of the island. Traveling through the country was really eye opening. I traveled from a large gated resort to areas where goats roamed around and trash littered the streets. The people I could see from my tour bus looked like they were working hard in the sun and they lived in the tiniest earthly homes. The shed in my backyard would have seemed like a nice house to the people in Dominican Republic. Kids would run alongside the bus trying to sell wildflowers for a dollar for their families. Kids had to work to try and help making a living for their families. These Dominican families clearly had never lived an easy life where they would go to resorts like the ones in Punta Cana. Through my travels through the real Dominican Republic I learned to appreciate my privileged lifestyle.
Dominican Republic showed me things I was blind to before. Here in America you would never realize just how different 3rd world countries are. People like us live in the lap of luxury and often times we do not even realize how lucky we are. While I was in the Dominican Republic I could see the two contrasting styles of life. In Dominican Republic I learned that no matter how much stuff or money the people around me have, I am still very lucky to be living in wealthy, well structured America.
