Poverty and wealth – The silent neighbours

I'm sitting in the taxi on our way home from

Singburi, looking out the window at the civilisation outside. Something that strikes me (and has stuck me since I got here) is a) that people live their everyday lives here, and b) that the living standard here is quite different from back home. 

Every time I go to a new place I'm a title bit amazed that people live their everyday lives here. It's not like they've just been put there around me to create some kind of illusion that there's something happening, but they're actually living here. They had houses, jobs, families, friends, partners, bills and hobbies in th as places where I have never been before. Just as my days go by in Scotland and Sweden, their days do the same there. I don't know why, but the thought of it just amazes me, and the more different it is from my life, the more it amazes me. 

But when I go to a kind of place like Thailand, or Vietnam, or South Africa, it is not just the culture difference that strikes me, but the living standards. I mean, here a lot of people live in shacks. And those who live in houses have dust and sand blowing in from the streets. Since I arrived in Thailand I have accepted that I'm always going to be a bit dirty, and that most of my things will be covered in a thin layer of dirt. And people here are used to that.

This week when we went to learn to make our own bracelets, we were at a woman's house and I'm telling you her house looked like an abandoned house would look in the UK or Sweden. The staircase was covered in dust and grime and cobwebs and the entire house was messy. It looked abandoned to be honest, and it just amazed me (and saddened me) that this is how she lives. 

But thinking about it, you get these kings and just other ridiculously wealthy people who have servants and all kinds of luxuries that we are not used to. So if they came and visited my flat in Aberdeen and saw how I lived my everyday life with working at Five Guys and having my flat freezing during the winter, they would probably feel the same as I did when I was in that woman's house. 

It just amazes me how people's lives can be so different. And how poverty and wealth have become silent neighbours, just carrying on next to each other, but yet so far apart. Deep thoughts, indeed.