This is Song Young-Sik.

As I walked along the Cheonggyecheon stream on my first day trip to Seoul, a man of my height dressed in a pocketed vest, long socks and tennis shoes shuffled up beside me and asked me something in Korean. Naturally, I shrugged in response, prompting him to ask in English where I had come from. Upon finding that I was American, he smiled, said, "You are wer-come," and shuffled along.

"Thank you," I said, and stopped to admire the stream. Minutes later he found me catching up to him, matched my pace and asked how many countries I have seen. I settled on 10 (though it could be 11 or 12), to which he replied, "Me, too," and began listing them off.

Once he realized I would listen, he talked more freely of his stay in Africa, stint in India and visits to Europe. Korea's Jeju Island is better than Hawaii, he said, but Kenya is paradise.

Several yards down the stream, he finally said, "I am Mr. Song." I taught him my name and he thanked me for letting him walk with me. Some days the walk is good--he's a regular who lives nearby--and some days, not so good, he said. I had nothing to say and we continued on.

We strolled mostly in silence, interjected by his tidbits of proverbial thoughts, as if he'd been stewing over them for days, weeks, longer. The poor man is happier than the rich man, who is blinded by money. People worry about small things that cause them unnecessary stress (perhaps I looked distracted) and worry about their appearance, often not realizing their "true" beauty (again, I had no response but to keep walking).

It was Friday, a day before Chuseok, the national holiday of thanksgiving. Mr. Song, 57 (in Korean years; 55 in American years and 233 in dog years), asked of my plans, and having arrived just three days earlier, I said I had none. He asked if I would walk the stream with him again the next day, because with no family or friends, it was a difficult day. "Sure," I responded nonchalantly.

The westward sun was turning the color of ale, and I craved rest and reflection in the form of beer. After leading me to the subway and finding directions for me to Itaewon, Mr. Song said he was "thank you God" that he'd run into me. I left him to walk upstream into the sunset alone, and I headed to a bar.

Truth be told, I wondered if I should see Mr. Song again. I'd already crossed hundreds of paths on my various globe-roaming stints in just a few years, knowing there would be hundreds of faces to come that I'd see once and never again. I could have stepped past his; I could have kept walking, but somewhere along the way I'd forgotten where I was going. My continental leaps had left me wandering and searching for signs, so I thought it best to walk, at least for a moment, with someone who knew the road. I didn't let him stand there waiting.

Mr. Song carried a knapsack this time. His load was heavier than the day before, but he stood taller and walked with a spring in his step. I frequently struggled to keep up, my lethargic California pace slowing me further on the sidewalks crowded shoulder to shoulder.

Instead of retracing the paths along Cheonggyecheon that day, Mr. Song brought me elsewhere. On that afternoon, the day of Chuseok, families flocked to their birthplaces and other sites significant to their ancestry, their traditions. The people of Seoul packed the streets and Mr. Song and I sought refuge in the massive Gyeongbokgung Palace, one of the many traditional royal estates embedded in the city's otherwise urban landscape.

Along the walk, he began to peel away years of layers, speaking freely to an audience he finally had, if only me. The descendant of a king of the Chungcheong province, Mr. Song had lost his wealth along with his father--a former education commissioner and chamber of commerce head, he said--in the early '90s, a tragedy that left him in search of questions and a purpose. While making ends meet as a gas station attendant, he engrossed himself in the Bible and read it twice through.

It took a world of misfortune to cave in on him before he was willing to walk with God, he said, and his newfound spirituality carried him across the earth to Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia, where he worked as a medic and missionary for three years. Later he studied at the University of the Nations disciple training program in Hawaii to do two months of outreach in India before returning indefinitely to Korea.

"Now my life is turning," Mr. Song said. He wants to go back to each of those places that he said inspired him so deeply and show more people "how to walk."

We sat on the palace lawn on a silver tarp he'd brought, and he shared cookies, an apple and soda for our thanksgiving picnic. I ate quietly, observing the hundreds of other visitors who sauntered, played and laid in the grass between me and the palace's tranquil pool.

After an hour Mr. Song walked with me to the Gwanghwamun subway station, telling me that he's seen two angels in his life, both while overseas. In Ethiopia, a small girl came up to him while he was on his motorcycle. When she touched his hand, he said, the sky opened for him (literally or figuratively, I didn't ask) and he heard heaven calling to him. He then said he wondered, since we'd encountered each other on a holiday so difficult for him, if I, too, was an angel.

I sighed and couldn't help feeling a pang of guilt that I may have misled this man. "No, definitely not," I said. "We're just people. I'm only human."

This is Linh Doan.

To help a child, some people go the extra mile. Others, like the 49-year-old man sitting in 47C, go a few thousand more.

Between short naps, my neighbor quietly studied his book on the origins of Christian churches. I stared out the window, mouth agape and camera at the ready, as our plane flew over the mountainous snow-capped islands of southeastern Alaska. I'd once backpacked the untouched wilderness of Patagonia, Chile, but this land, a white, unpainted canvas, was like nothing I'd ever seen. So clean, so pure, it was hard to believe such soil could be part of the red, white and blue.

We flew west, the sun to the south. Despite the glare, I snapped frantically as the small islands gave way to larger masses, rivers, cliffs. My hypnosis was broken by the flight attendant, who urged me to shut the window; the light, she said, was bothering the other passengers.

Please, I asked, is there anywhere I can open a window? A weekly task for her, a life milestone for me, she finally seemed to sense my urgency. Once she pointed me to the rear emergency exit, I politely asked my neighbor, would you mind, and graciously thanked him before bolting to the back of the plane.

Fifteen minutes later another flight attendant ushered me (for the third time) away from the emergency door window on her side of the plane. I reluctantly returned to row 47.

Thanks again, I told my neighbor as I took my seat. Of course, he replied -- I've flown this way so many times and never realized we came here. Amazing, he remarked when I showed him my recent acquisitions. Is this your first time going to Asia?

Yes, I was on my way to Korea; I'd found my way to pay off my previous travels by traveling some more. Admittedly it wasn't where (or who -- I mean, elementary school English teacher, really) I expected to be even two months before, but as they say: wherever you go, there you are.

So there I was, sharing stories about my prior travels, all driven by journalism and the addiction to seeing, living, absorbing the world firsthand. About my desire to pursue development economic reporting, a passion I'd fallen for in Ghana. He seemed caught somewhere between amazement and amusement at my independence, my ability to pick up and go, and my openness and curiosity for cultures foreign to my own. It's not something many people have, I said. Hopefully I'd be able to use it for some good.

It wasn't until I realized I'd shown him nearly all my cards -- I usually let others do the talking -- until he would share his story. Upon hearing it, I came to realize why.

En route to Cambodia via Seoul, Linh was on his way to Hagar Ministry in the capital Phnom Penh with a delivery. Along with the first aid equipment in his carry-on overhead, he was bringing the donations from members of his Westminster, Calif.-based Vietnamese Baptist Church to the small organization dedicated to the "rehab" of about 80 Vietnamese girls as young as 7 years old, all former victims of child trafficking.

Children are taken from poor towns in Vietnam, Laos and the like, he explained, and brought to Cambodia's manual and sexual labor markets. There are several organizations in Phnom Penh that try to "rescue" these children from their destitute occupations, but for the simple need for day-to-day sustenance, many of them return to where they know they can find a wage.

He opened his laptop to show me the poverty he found, sharing photos of the ministry and the thin girls there -- many of whom looked, to me, far younger than the ages he was describing. Trucks and vans on the bumper-to-bumper road packed passengers to the brim, piling onto tailgates and roofs. In an area prone to flooding, homes were built on rafts. Linh played video clips of small boys seated in buckets, paddling their way to and fro through the muck; neither car nor bicycle could have been of much use in that Cambodian Venice.

In one wall-less house, a mother and three children sat on the floor with an elderly couple (grandparents, neighbors, I can't recall). The mother, whose AIDS progression was evident in her drooping eyes and forehead, had forced her oldest daughter, 8, out of the house to make room for the third child, also with evident facial signs of AIDS. The 8-year-old had been left to fend for herself until Linh made a personal plea for Hagar's directors to take her in.

Moreover, he explained, the challenge lies not only in keeping the girls off the streets, but rescuing them in the first place. Prostitution isn't illegal there, but raiding them is. As in many developing countries, Phnom Penh's police would accept bribes from prostitution house owners, then alert them if they heard of any upcoming "rescue missions." Another photo showed a girl at Hagar in her early teens, weeping inconsolably over news that her sister could not be saved from a local whorehouse.

Surviving on donations like the $500 a month raised by Linh's church, Hagar and other organizations around town provide trauma counseling, elementary education and vocational training to give the girls a brighter possibility of changing their future. Hagar trains the teens in nail and hair styling. "That's all they focus on because they're only able to help a few," Linh explained.

Since his first visit to Hagar in 2006, he has been compelled to return "because of the depth of the tragedy," he said. "It's not known; it's not reported. The trauma is so deep.

"I cannot think of anything worse than that for people."

Beyond just convincing fellow church members to go to Phnom Penh and see the places they help, Linh also adopted a 16-year-old girl from Hagar this year after a long bureaucratic battle. With a fresh start in California, she has entered 11th grade, despite her limited English skills and 6th grade education. Acknowledging that this is an exponentially better situation for her, Linh is also on this fourth trip to Cambodia (and third to the ministry) to scope out the possibilities for his foster daughter's friends to find new homes in the States.

We talked for moments longer, about the U.S. Homeland Security's own efforts to help the situation, about our agreement that the stories that need to be told the most are often underreported. "Many of these girls don't have a voice," he said. When the stories of day-to-day life have already been told, the world's attention turns to the next great catastrophe. I passed him my email address in case he had more stories to share.

Our conversation wound down as my internal clock begged for rest, impervious to the glaring sun outside that never set. Before one last attempt at a nap, I jotted a quick entry:

"Rejuvenated.
Still on the plane...I've found inspiration in the man two seats down from me, Linh. The first subject of my blog, he's en route to Cambodia for his 3rd visit to Hagar Ministry...It reminds me of the story that needs to be told, and that I'm the person to do it...
Now I'm trembling with enthusiasm that I might be getting my chance to be myself -- and be good at it! -- once again."

I hoped this was not just a fleeting moment of confidence and that for the next year I would continue to encounter other people who might impress me just as well, who might shine a light on worlds I have yet to know, and who might guide me to purposeful journeys down paths I'd always hoped but was never sure existed.

The plane landed on time at South Korea's Incheon International Airport. We stood to gather our belongings and go our separate ways. "It's nice to know you," he said and wished me luck.

Nice to know you, too.