Read time: 2.5 min.

I'm in the taxi, on my way to Bangkok airport.

It’s the end of a 3-week adventure in Thailand.

I feel my jaws relax, my lips rest against my teeth, and I exhale with deep satisfaction.

"I'm going to miss this place," I think, gazing out the window.

• The peaceful people

• The alien-like, exotic fruits

• The animals I’d only ever seen on the Planet Earth series.

It’s all so different from home.

But somehow, it feels like a second home.

My thoughts are interrupted when I spot a worn-out scooter at the traffic light.

A family of five is squeezed onto it.

The youngest clings to his mother while the father grips the handlebars.

Next to them, a pickup truck rumbles forward with a standing cow in the back, calmly chewing dry grass as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

And it is.

Such scenes have become so familiar that they no longer surprise me.

But something else did, and it broke my heart.

A distant dream

I asked the taxi driver, a middle-aged man with kind eyes, if he had ever been on vacation.

"No," he replied. In fact, he had never left Bangkok.

I raised my eyebrows in amazement.

As realization set in, I stared out the window again—lost in the view.

Here I was, a 23-year-old who had crossed continents, speaking to a 46-year-old father of three who had never left his own city.

Curious, I asked him where he would most like to travel if he ever had the chance.

"Japan," he answered, smiling. "They have snow there."

His simple answer made me pause and think.

For me, traveling is a given part of my life.

But for this man, it’s a distant dream.

He will probably never:

• See the magical Northern Lights.

• Hear the crunch of snow under his shoes.

• Gaze at the starry sky in the middle of the desert.

This touched me deeply.

Not out of pity for the driver, but because I realized how free I truly am.

Freedom is a gift—not a given

Free to travel the world, meet new people, and work from wherever I want.

Entrepreneurship has given me that freedom—the freedom to live without boundaries.

Gratitude is key, friends.

Because what is obvious to us can be a distant dream for someone else.

Much love,

— Martijn