I have so much to say about Curaçao. In 2023, I traveled to South America to assist a senior colleague with an issue in Venezuela. A former traditional partner pointed us toward Curaçao—since it’s an independent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands with its own immigration and naturalization policies, it was possible to use Curaçao as a pathway to Dutch residency, so we decided to explore it together with our team @suji_yan. That Christmas, over a dozen of us flew more than 50 hours—via London and Colombia—to reach this island near the Venezuelan border. Despite being part of the Netherlands, the island looked like a rundown county town. You’d think it was a tourist destination, but there was literally nothing scenic about it. The roads were riddled with potholes; thank god my off-road driving skills were solid. The island’s economy centered around one massive oil refinery. After sanctions against Venezuela in 2010 wiped out its only business, the facility shut down completely. The guy we dealt with was named Bacuna—a surname as common in Curaçao as “Wang” or “Li” in China—and he looked exactly like Shaquille O’Neal. His sister was a senior official at Curaçao’s immigration bureau. She walked us through the process and had us fill out piles of paperwork. To show good faith, we paid a deposit. But on the third day, when we were supposed to meet again to proceed, he suddenly vanished. The intermediary forwarded me a voice message from him saying he’d been arrested for fraud. I was completely stunned. Meanwhile, the intermediary himself had already paid a significant amount—and now even his sister couldn’t be reached. My heart sank. I immediately suspected we’d been set up. We fled the island that same day, heading straight for Mexico. This was my first—and hopefully last—experience dealing with a place I’d never even heard of before. In the end, we got scammed. So screw them. Let Germany beat Curaçao 7-1!