One of our employees left our office since his wife said that she wasn’t able to take the fact anymore that he had too many business trips. Anyway, he laughed and told us that he had earned 1 million dollars by selling one of his parents’ properties, which he didn’t take care of for long time. He said that he had another five properties as well, so if he sold all of them, his assets would be about five million dollars in total, I guess (lol). Just for your information, he was working for us with 300 dollars paycheck per month, and he wanted to keep working for us if his wife didn’t have any problems. Anyway, he said that he was sorry for leaving the job.

Well, when I was with Socheat, a live-in manager of our farm, in a car yesterday, he pointed at a land and said, “Our family owns this land here, but we don’t take care of it at all. But, my parents are saying that they don’t want to sell it”. The land he pointed at was an area which is close to Siem Reap and they just had a guy who wanted to buy the land with 250,000 dollars. His parents’ house is located at another area, which is closer to the city center. Then, he said, “Well, I have my own land too, its size is about 1 hectare. My parents gave it to me. But, I haven’t done any paperwork yet, like changing the ownership’s name, because I have been busy to do lots of work for the farm”.

I was like, “What? Really? Is it so? That means that the land brings you money dozens of times as much as your annual income!!!” However, he said that it was more important for him to put much efforts on his current job to succeed because he loved the agriculture a lot. I admired him a little (actually a lot) when I heard that.

Anyway, it is definitely true that lands bring you amazingly increase of assets if you own lands at appropriate areas, isn’t it? I heard that the lands, where Park Hyatt Siem Reap is currently located at, used to be rice fields and the owner wanted to sell them for a song. The current price of the land of Siem Reap district is hundred times as high as the price used to be. I think the price is still cheap since Siem Reap is a place, which is safe and close to the airport, where many foreigners living at, and where the UNESCO World Heritage site is located at.

Well, since the lands, which used to be wilderness with few value, has a million dollar value right now,   the families of our employees, who live in Siem Reap for long time, is getting ranked as the rich category (and this category is “the real rich” even from the view of the Japanese standard) within this fifteen years. However, their ordinary life is still simple and there are still many people who are willing to do hard jobs with low income, like Socheat. I think that is one of the biggest reasons why I am attracted to Siem Reap so bad.