I'm not sure how much these people are struggling with their low spending.
The reality is that I usually see (in this order) an airport, a taxi, a conference room, a hotel dining room and/or bar, a hotel room, a taxi, an airport.
The idea that there is much downtime on a business trip is a fantasy of those who don't travel for work.
Unfortunately my plan to do the same for the Edinburgh fringe did not work out
We paid 1/2 off for our car with a company perq and are having the company cover about 50k in expenses on a home were in the midst of purchasing.
You should take advantage of your opportunities more.
I remember looking at this in Malaysia and one of the thing that put me off was the "servant" issue - the idea of having a servant was just creepy to me.
Just to be clear, they are not your servant, no matter the usage of the word, or how you see other people treating them. You define the relationship, and it is up to you to treat them the way you would treat other individuals. And above all else, they are an employee like any other (either yours, or the company's). Just because they work in your house, and do so in an ad-hoc fashion rather than for a set list of tasks does not mean it's different, i.e. it doesn't change the employer/employee relationship.
Its the same argument about working in pre Mandela South Africa.
Much of success is embodied in modeled behaviors and attitudes. By dint of employing them, you have the opportunity to model for them success-oriented attributes, and let them pick and choose what is culturally and socioeconomically prudent to adopt into their lives. If you want to go a more activist route, if you and they have children you can intertwine their lives together and sponsor (tuition, fees, clothing and supplies) their children (if they are young enough) to the international school and after-school activities that expatriates usually use, and give your children a cultural exchange education second-to-none in the process. The possibilities to make positive change are endless, and only limited by your resources. Just be careful of fostering dependencies, and be open with those who you partner with in the endeavor about the probability of you getting assigned out of your host nation and abruptly changing their situation.
By contrast, advocating against "facilitating apartheid with a brown face", through various political means at your disposal as an individual citizen in the developed world, helps to eventually effect change through policy circles, but usually only at a very long game timeframe. Typically in the years to decades scale.
We need BOTH kinds of advocacy to effect humanitarian change. But if you are already in a position to make a personal, first-person, actionable, on-the-ground change, I urge you to grab it with both hands; there are too few people in this world with your principles, perception, and opportunity. Whether you are facilitating apartheid or making positive change depends upon the deep nature of your interaction, not the overall first-blush official description of the relationships.
Very rarely is this kind of change a binary switch, and it almost always involves a "getting from Point A to Point B" transition that has the trappings of distasteful practices, but the on-the-ground reality for most individuals (even highly privileged ones like most of us on HN) is resources are limited, and we have to get creative with how we re-purpose (and overload, to borrow OO lingo) normal, everyday interactions with positive change payloads.
Buddy, the kinds of places I get to travel aren't exactly postcard-worthy.
On the rare occasion I get to travel to a "fun place" I do my best but I'm not living in Europe where everyone gets 12 weeks of vacation. I live in the USA where every moment I spend at leisure directly affects the amount of money I have in my pocket.
Google "opportunity costs" and you'll catch my drift.
Indeed, I was surprised how little time we had for anything except of working and sleeping.