There are always more than two sides to every coin (don't forget the edges). For every trip that's a day in paradise, there's one or more that isn't, but no matter where you are, being gone 24 hours from home is still three times what most people spend doing for the company, in the office, and three days on the road is six days at home, even if it's in paradise. It sounds like a great deal, but when you're gone enough that you realize it's going to take a whole lot more than a day on a white sand beach to make up for the time you've lost (read: compensation).
I've had employers and clients pay to go to football games, put me up at a waterfront hotel in Ketchikan with a few hundred dollars of play money and told to "have a good time," and have been put in 1,300 dollar hotel rooms and five star places around the world. I've flown hollywood stars and sports celebrities and business greats, and have shared their extremely expensive catering. Overnights in Dubai, Hong Kong, New York, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Rio, Anchorage, Bahrain, and other places, sometimes a week there, or more, are sometimes highlights. No question about it.
For every one of those nights there have been months on end in a tent in Basrah, or taking rocket fire in Mosul, or getting through the multiple checkpoints and metal detectors to the check-in desk in Karachi, only to watch scores of people cruise in and out of the lobby carrying automatic weapons. Overnights in motel 6's, shabby places in Liege, living the high life in Kandahar and Kabul or Mazar e Sharif, and of course Newark.
What it really comes down to when one is gone from home for two days, a week, a month, or ten months, as the case may be, is that those are ten months of one's life that one doesn't get back, that one doesn't get to see kids learning to walk, talk, or go on their first date, or make the wife a happy girl. It's good and well to lay on the sand in Waikiki, but it's not so great to do it alone. One night I found myself at the top floor of a hotel in that very place, Waikiki, in Hawaii, on a perfect evening. I was sending a message on my laptop, this one, in fact. A series of bangs rang out, and I found myself crawling down the open air hall-way to find that fireworks were being launched over the beach. In another time and another place I'd love to have watched them; I always loved fireworks as a kid. But I couldn't force myself to get up. I just came from a year in Iraq, and all the booms and bangs there were the genuine article. I was physically in paradise, but still trapped in Iraq.
Going to exotic locations is great. I absolutely love Hong Kong, and the greatest place in the world for me, far from exotic for most, is Anchorage. I'm very much at home in Dubai, and I don't mind Afghanistan. The wonder and newness of foreign locals goes away fairly quickly, however, and home is always where you hang your hat temporarily, but never quite like the place where you left your family behind (and if you're really fortunate, are still there waiting for you). Getting paid for the flight hours, or a salary that covers the days still doesn't make up for all the time gone, or for the layovers in (insert any place here). Most places are about the same after a while, truth be told, and none of them come close to replacing home.
