Eleven-year-old Philipp, known as Lippel, travels from Passau in Bavaria to the Orient without a flying carpet: because his father, the posh chef Otto Mattenheim, is on a business trip, the new housekeeper Mrs. Jakob looks after Lippel. But she turns out to be a petty childish terror. And so Lippel escapes into an oriental dream world at night, in which his father, Mrs. Jakob and two classmates strangely appear. Lippel experiences the most amazing adventures in the Orient. His dreams help him and his classmates to chase the evil Mrs. Jakob out of the house and rescue his new friend, the street dog Muck.