Visa. Already approved. Airline ticket. Already purchased and emailed. Travel allowance. Already sent by Western Union. Sim card. Already sent through courier. Medicine, eye glasses, face creams, – already packed.

Due to arrive next Friday, my mother was very anxious. Everyday we had been checking all the required travel documents that she needed to take with her. Each time I called our home, we discussed over and over again the procedure in the airport – check-in of her luggage, boarding pass, immigration queue, going to the pre-departure area, boarding the plane, calling me as soon as she landed in Dubai International Airport and claiming her luggage.

Her first trip to abroad seemed to be a taxing process but at the same time her joy could not be fathomed.

Living most of our life in hardship, traveling for leisure was a farfetched idea. There were more important things to consider – school tuition fees, books and uniforms, electric and water bills, groceries, school allowance – than spending my parents’ hard earned money in any trips.

A lot of things were considered in her journey due to her age and circumstance being a first time traveler and alone while crossing the continents. A convenient and comfy flight was the priority which of course was directly proportionate to the fare I had to pay.

My mother in her early sixties eventually made her milestone. After almost two hours, my mother surfaced in the arrival area of Dubai International Airport. Thanks to the mobile phone technology and I managed to track her otherwise, we had waited longer in the airport.

As my greatest gift to her, I made sure that she would cover as much as possible all the beautiful places and tourist spots in United Arab Emirates.

We hopped in and out in a double decker bus for a one day activity. Though I was a bit hesitant, I still took my mother in desert safari to experience the exhilarating dune bashing and a camp dinner in the desert.

During the first few days spent in the parks and malls, my mother just could not resist staring the people she met and encountered. Dubai known for a melting pot of west to east and of north to south of the globe, it was a mesmerizing experience to see people in many nationalities.

One day in the mall, she came out from the washroom. She rushed to me like a child and eagerly shared her admiration for the beautiful ladies she saw in the washroom. They were Muslim women donned in black “abaya” (a traditional black dress worn by Muslim women which covered their whole body) and veil which oftentimes covered their face except the eyes. In the washroom while these ladies tried to take off their veils to fix it or retouch their make-ups, my mother saw their angelic faces with deep-seated eyes and long eyes lashes complemented with a perfect nose shape. She could not stop mumbling of the beautiful goddesses she saw beneath the black abaya and veil.

Taking her to the church was another memorable experience. Her attention to the saris could not be disrupted.

She murmured, “They look like the clan of Shiva,” whom she was referring to our half Indian neighbor back home. Shiva”s house was next to ours and her children were my childhood playmates. They could easily be distinguished because of their dominant features – long eye lashes, curly or wavy hairs, tan complexion – very atypical for Southeast Asian origins like us.

I fed her too with fresh milk, yogurt, fruits, fresh juice, seafood and other foodstuff which were considered excessiveness because of our tight financial situation. She learned to eat variety of cuisines from hummus, kabbab, paratha, biryani, shawarma, etc.

She had great time also enjoying Shisha in one of the local Arabic café.

But the place she liked most was the “Gold Souq” (gold market). The wide arrange of designs, length and thickness of the jewelries made in gold captured her. This trip in this part of Dubai somehow drained my pocket.

Being with my mother for six weeks in Dubai, I was taught to see the world through her eyes. Traveling in your golden years is discovering the world through people, culture and experience and not by mammoth malls, sophisticated buildings and state-of-the-art technologies.