Rich

I spent the last two days worrying about visit to the village I had scheduled. The guests I had to take to the village were the biggest celebrities that I have had so far. Not particularly famous guest, but very wealthy guests.

In my five months of work, I have taken many different people to the village. Some of them were rich and I am sure that some of them are multimillionaires. However, that fact has never made me nervous before. The problem this time was that I knew who the guests were prior to taking them to village, I could look them up on Google, and I could see their names on Forbes’s list of richest people. These were the first billionaires that I had to take to the village.

Before today I had never met a billionaire, much less spent three hours with one. In my mind, I had a very different image of the super-rich. I imagined people who demanded everything presented to perfection; people who traveled to exotic locations and never did anything outside of a set schedule. I imagine a very high number of expectations that I would have to live up to. Needless to say, I felt very nervous that I could make an impression that might make or break my entire career.

However, these guests were none of these things. They were easy going and relaxed. The husband and wife were traveling with their three sons, and it did not take long before I thought to myself that this could be any family of people traveling to Cambodia. The more we talked, the more I realized that I was the expert in the car; that despite a huge income gap, I was far superior in knowledge; and most importantly, that I was in control of the situation.

I am not sure that I can say that I blew them away, but I certainly impressed them. I took them to meet a group of families that have received support from us in the past. I have met the families several times, and the experience was not so captivating for me. However, the guests were supremely interested in the details of the individuals. One of the sons even remarked that the experience was the most impacting of their entire trip.

In one of the most bizarre experiences of my life, I watched as the villagers prepared some corn and papaya for the guests. There in a small wooden house, I ate sweet corn with people in the top 0.0000001% of global wealth, offered freely by people in the bottom 10%. I am not a huge corn fan, but this corn tasted more savory than usual.

I have no idea what will come of the experience. All I can say is that it was very memorable and made me quite happy: happy to know that my work and the work of the hotel can impress people of high stature, happy that I have an amazing job that provides me these opportunities, but mostly I was happy to discover that people from the highest haves to the lowest have-nots can find a mutual connection and understanding.