⛓️‍💥 The Business of Being Free — Post 5: Old Enough to Be Invisible

The world wants us in the back, in the kitchen, and quiet.

Grand World Phu Quoc Vietnam

Somewhere in those three months in Turkiye, something in me was working itself loose. I didn't see it happening. I only saw it once I landed in Phu Quoc and finally stopped moving.

Back in Athens, before any of the road trip or the apartments or the exit chaos, I was already tending to my spiritual practices.

By the time I hit Istanbul, I was living on the 16th floor of an apartment, waking at six in the morning out of habit, watching the whole city move underneath me without needing to be part of its noise. I started sitting in silence most mornings with enough stillness to hear myself. Some mornings that silence ran twenty minutes. Some mornings it ran longer. I wasn't chasing an outcome. 

I didn't clock any of this as "transformation" while it was happening. It just felt like normal “living” (digital nomad living) — one more thing to get through in a country that fought me at every turn. It wasn't until Phu Quoc, when the flight-or-flight finally stopped, that I felt and saw the difference.

My Month in Phu Quoc Was Lovely

You can read all about it here.

However, because I am a Libra Sun- the sign of balance and justice, with the element of air- it weighs, measures, and wants the scales level. The Scorpio Moon in me, with the element of water, feels the rot beneath a pretty surface and refuses to call it clean. It’s a sign of transformation and as such, we Scorpios always hold a mirror to those we encounter.

Even in that beautiful ease in the island I was made privy to the undercurrent. I am always given the opportunity to pierce through the facade.

The Libra part of me wants harmony; the Scorpio part me won't accept harmony that's only skin-deep. That tension is the engine — it's why I don’t ever just enjoy the calm and look away. Notice I said “don’t ever JUST enjoy.” I didn’t say “don’t ever enjoy.” I know how to enjoy myself despite my gifts that often double as curses. As most gifts do.

Scorpio is the zodiac's investigator, the one who digs out what's buried and pierces the facade, and that is my calling. So here's what I learned in Phu Quoc about the working culture in Vietnam without even looking for it.

The Server Who Didn't Know He Was Giving Me a Blog Post

A 17-year-old server and I got to talking. He asked me questions about how long I’m here, what I do, etc. He was very friendly and pleasant. Much later when he told me his age my first thought was- aah! He’s just joining the real world and it hasn’t gotten to him yet. I hope it never does. He was a beam of light as most young people are before the world gets to them or before their own toxic families break their spirit. I had him guess my age after I asked him his and he guessed 33. This is not the first person in Phu Quoc who guessed this age. He was really surprised and shared how in Vietnam people retire early as they don’t get hired past a certain age. I asked what age is that and he said they don’t get hired past 33.

Later during our interactions he said this is very prominent at least in the service or labor industries. He said if they’re a degreed professional they can keep working. He shared how his 42-year-old mother doesn't work anymore. I asked what does she do? He said she stays home taking care of his little brother. I immediately thought of a young vietnamese woman I befriended at another shop a couple of weeks before. I had spent a big part of one day talking to her and she had shared how her mom who is only 50 no longer works and when she (the daughter) suggests things to her mother, her mother says “I’m too old.” Hands to my face. The injustice on women I keep discovering is beyond what I can bear. Her mother too has a young child- much younger than this young woman who was college-aged. Two families I met where they had one working adult child and a younger one born more than a decade later. Was this a trend? She shared her mother remarried at some point and had the boy (her brother) and now she stays home taking care of him.

What made me even sadder is that prior to her telling me that she had shared that her mother was a very independent woman prior to this second marriage. She was a saleswoman who traveled through different countries for business and she built her career doing that. I was devastated. Another one bites the dust! To go from that type of independence with a booming career to being completely dependent and hidden is, in my opinion, one of the most devastating experiences in a human’s life. Most especially a womans’ life. 

I have so many questions still on how she went from that to the current situation- calling herself old and not wanting to do any self-care or wear certain cute things her daughter suggests. But I think I have a pretty good idea of what happened. Society happened. Patriarchy happened. The institution of marriage happened. Men who oppress happened. Reproductive abuse happened. Peer pressure happened. “Are-you-going-to-die-alone?” happened. Over and over. The messaging is the same. You’re a woman- you belong where we put you. Stay there.

What the Stillness Let Me See

Then I remembered all the coffee shops and restaurants I’d been to so far. The restaurant where I keep eating has the mother in the kitchen, invisible, while her son or daughter work the front. The mother stays in the back. The child handles the customers. I mean almost every single local coffee shop or restaurant had this same situation.

Why? That same 17-year-old server told me the service industry doesn't really hire women past 33. When I researched it, the reason was uglier than I expected. Companies want young workers who'll accept less pay and burn more hours. Vietnam passed laws against this kind of age discrimination. The companies ignore them. It’s as if the laws don’t exist. Younger bodies are simply easier to exploit. Like this young man told me- I’m still working on my dreams.

I asked him — so what about the women who are older? He said if you're a professional, a doctor or a lawyer, you keep working. Those are the examples I used. He had used the word “degree.” I don't know for certain if that's true, but that's what he told me, and you could see the logic of it in who was allowed to be seen and who wasn't.

So the older women end up in the kitchens, and when a foreigner like me tries to talk to one of them, she calls her kid over to handle it. I caught some of them watching me from the back. I wondered if they’re wondering what I’m doing traveling alone (which I get a lot). I also wonder- do they wish they had the freedom I have? Makes me sad just thinking about it. Not having options nor opportunities, which to me means not having freedom is so sad to me. Human beings are here to be free and that is taken from us from such a young age.

I know that look I saw from them because I've seen it up close. Years ago I asked my grandmother — the one who cared for my kids when they were tiny, who has a third-grade education — "Abuela, do you want to trade places with me? You go work and I'll stay with the kids?" And she said, in Spanish, "Ay girl, if I could, trust me, I would." It broke my heart then. It broke again when I noticed these women in  Phu Quoc. Even more after learning about these limitations.

Which brings me to the age they kept guessing for me: 33. Did they land on that number because they saw me working on my laptop, traveling, moving through the world, and 33 is the oldest a working woman is allowed to be in their frame of reference? Because they couldn't picture someone older, with grown children, out here doing this? The hotel staff were different — they saw my passport, they knew my real age, and I was treated accordingly. But the servers, who never saw a document? To them I couldn't have been past 33, because past 33 you're supposed to be home according to their societal programming, not out traveling the world and definitely not working on a laptop.

I’m still wondering, what if the woman doesn’t have more children? But it seems they have more right at an age before society “retires” them.

What a tragedy. Most of the best a woman has to give doesn’t come until after 40.

Europe Was a Different Version of the Same Thing

I saw kids working the tourism industry in Italy and Greece too, but the reason there was language, not age. Their parents keep working until late in life but they don't speak English, so the children become the face of the family business by necessity. They’re forced to. I saw it in Turkiye as well.

A hotel owner told me his son went off to college and didn't want to continue the family business which was the hotel they owned in Procida Island. His son told him he needed to learn English. So the father did. This is the reason I could communicate with him very well during my entire 10-day stay in Procida.

Now I ask you: if that had been a daughter, would she have been able to say that to her father? Based on how I watched women get treated in Italy, I can tell you the answer is most likely a big NO. Europe has pensions though. What it also has, in those two countries, is a grotesque amount of ageism and misogyny running right alongside the pension checks.

Why This Happens — The Pension Gap

In my research I learned that this is how things work in Asia because these countries’ governments don’t have a retirement pension system like the West does. This is why women in the West don’t have to rely on their children. They work and get a 401K or they receive pension from the government. I wasn’t aware of this nor had I made that connection. Now I know another reason why the West has been so glorified and mimicked for far too long. It’s these little things in the system that give the illusion of freedom.

South Korea Is Already Changing

So I asked about South Korea specifically because as I write this I have a drafted blog post on the culture around women in South Korea. It’s been sitting in draft mode since last year. So what I found is that it is changing a lot in South Korea because the government now provides a pension. 

How. Interesting.

Women’s freedom in a country is determined by whether or not she will have financial support from the government after a certain age. If she doesn’t, she depends on the men around her. If there is no man, then her daughter. Isn’t it interesting though how governments and their created societies like to make sure we have little access to these tools? That’s a blog post for another day.

Then It Came Closer To Me

The only woman with real seniority I saw at my last resort (and the others when I pondered on it) worked the spa and the kitchen — many never guest-facing. Every front-of-house face was young. Same pattern I'd been tracking everywhere else, just closer now.

The first event was with one of those type of women who uphold patriarchy by following what she’s been taught by society- to hate on other women. She was rude and dismissive. I complained to the hotel. Then a server who kept me and another couple waiting for about fifteen minutes while he watched from the spa room next door with that same woman, walked over irritated, picked his nose at me deliberately with his middle finger and flipped me off. I canceled the order before he could do something to my food. I later figured out the spa is where the woman I complained about spent the rest of her time when not in the kitchen. Yes. An employee doubling as a masseusse and a server…..I know.

Then it got worse. A “free” massage with no draping, no privacy curtain, a flat "open" when I questioned her. I tipped her anyway — that's who I am, not because she earned it but because I have money and can spend it however I want. I make sure to shatter any stereotypes they have about brown people not tipping or not tipping well. It was after the massage that I realized she was the same woman I'd already complained about for her attitude in the kitchen, and that the server's hostility toward me was connected to that.

I never went back to the restaurant for any meals and I got a refund for the experience.

I Went Looking, and I Wasn't the Only One

Then I looked through the google reviews of the resort. Curious- are there any other “hidden” bad reviews? A resort ran this badly with this kind of unprofessional staff does not have the score they have in Google. 

If you look at the lowest reviews you’ll notice the pattern of whom they treat as less than. This is a thing I’ve come to recognize as a brown person who often encounters discrimination.

Even the refund had to be fought for. Booking.com said one thing, the resort said another. As if  I wouldn’t catch them “low balling” me. I pushed back and only then did they reverse course and issued the refund.

If you look at the names on the reviews this resort dismisses versus the language they get answered with. Every critical review from a non-white guest gets the same script: "we are saddened," "we take this seriously." Blah blah blah…. a paragraph of manufactured warmth that changes nothing and means absolutely nothing. They think that works but you reap what you sow. I will check in a year or two on how this resort is doing if they keep the same people.

A staff member flipped me off because I complained about someone else's rudeness. A woman traveling alone got skipped at breakfast while other tables were served. A family got accused of theft before anyone checked the room (one of the other bad reviews). These add up to a pattern with a shape. The resort was Valley Village Resort, Phu Quoc.

They will never see another of my MANY dollars there again.

If I was a man traveling I would have never received this treatment. This is what happens to a woman moving through a country where the staff is selected because of their age and not their capabilities, and the people senior enough to know better are kept out of sight.

The Oldest Trick There Is

Here's what I've come to understand after years of this. People simmering in envy try to minimize or sabotage the happiness of someone they've decided doesn't deserve it. I've watched it in almost every country I've set foot in — so many unintelligent, uneducated NPCs, angry at their own lives, and instead of using that energy to better themselves, they launch it at the person they resent. Because of age. Because of ethnicity. Because of gender. I've been targeted for all three my whole life. Especially because I started my business at 28 and looked 18. I am an expert in ageism, sexism, and racism. I’ve encountered them in every way, shape or form.

Honestly, at this point it's hilarious. Can the world come up with something new? No. They're sheep. Everywhere they all do the exact same thing because they're followers, not leaders. Rinse and repeat.

Imagine if you used all that energy to improve yourselves? To ask: what are these people doing that I'm not? But then again — a lot of the enviers are so ugly inside they don't deserve any of it and so, you won’t ever get the fortunes so many of us with good hearts get. 

With that much ugliness inside you, you will never have it.

I planned to buy a pacifier and leave it in an envelope with a message for the man-child who flipped me off . So he could soothe himself, you know? Tend to his child wounds. I didn't have time, unfortunately. "Yeah, I was gonna do that, but I carried on living my life." One of my favorite movie quotes from “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”

May these people bask in their miseries.

Off With Their Heads!

I think about my own kids while I'm sitting with all of this. They're in their twenties, building businesses, taking their time, genuinely enjoying being young — because nothing in our life ever required them to trade their youth for my survival. That was never a debt I let them carry. I didn't understand, until this trip, how rare that actually is on this planet. For most of the world, it's not even a question. The children work to support as the main source of income at times. The mothers step back. They don’t see it as a choice because no other was ever offered.

Don't worry, ladies. The divine feminine is returning. A lot of young women are not accepting these ridiculous legacies. This “man-child” type and the brainwashed women who prop up their patriarchy and misogyny have no place in the era that's ushering in.

Only independent, outspoken women, and the men who genuinely support them will make it.

And that makes me ecstatic for the future of this planet. “Off with their heads!” (another favorite movie quote from “Alice in Wonderland.”)

Stay In The Loop

🔵 Next in the Turkiye series: What Istanbul Actually Cost Us — A Month on the 16th Floor

— Browse digital guides and tools in the store.

— Build location-independent income → Sophisticated Business Strategies

— Subscribe to the Substack for the weekly dispatch → gypsyspirit.substack.com

📩 Stay Notified

The algorithm belongs to the old system. Sign up below to get these posts delivered directly to your inbox — no feed required.