This is Beach 69.

We turned off the highway shortly after 10 p.m. There were no signs I could make out but she knew the way. The one-lane road was paved, unlit. No street signs, no lane markers, no barriers that separated it from the wild. We approached a short, heavy gate that opened up to another long, dark road. Weird, she said. It’s late; why is that open? The heavy red legs were swung out at different angles, as if the wind had a say in it. Just in case, we parked our 4-Runner outside the gate and got out. A gust blew my door shut.

We weren’t supposed to be here. I left the flashlight. The bright half moon revealed the intimate details of the contours of the clouds that surrounded it and the world below glowed with flat, deathly pale luminescence. Our path was well lit. Only the shadows lurking under tall, thorny mesquite trees could have held any secrets from us. The only sounds were of wind and crickets. Ah, I said with a grin, this is the stuff horror movies are made of.

Behind a thick grove of trees to the right I spotted the barely visible orange glow of an artificial light. It was the only sign of life around. Edging closer we approached a chain-link gate, unlocked, unmarked. Propped up by a couple rusty poles, it opened to a dirt road that quietly curved down beyond the trees, towards the glow we could no longer see. No fence was attached to keep foot traffic out but we decided it looked uninviting enough. It creaked back and forth in the gusts like a warning to intruders that it wouldn’t sit idly by if they tried to enter. This doesn’t seem right, she said. This isn’t the place.

We left the gate squeaking behind us and walked, briskly but not too swiftly, back to the vehicle. On second thought, maybe this is it, she said; let’s check it out again. Once back inside the 4-Runner we crept through the gate with the swinging red legs, down the road, past the trees hiding the orange glow and the creaking unmarked gate. The road ended at a small parking lot. The signs, illuminated in our headlights, warned of strong currents and a rocky shoreline. No lifeguard on duty. Yeah, we’re here, she said, and once again we left the 4-Runner outside the gate with the swinging red legs.

With a little more confidence we restarted our descent on foot when another car turned off the highway and crawled down the one-lane road towards us. We stopped behind the 4-Runner to avoid its headlights and waited for it to pass. It continued past us without hesitance and turned into the road past the gate with the swinging red legs. It stopped at the creaky unmarked one, the headlights challenging it, exposing it, stripping it naked of its mystery. The passenger got out and pushed the rusty little thing aside and the car strode through. He closed it, got in the car and they followed the unpaved road, past the trees, toward the orange glow, and disappeared from sight.

We didn’t care for the private property and snuck by the unmarked gate. It still creaked in warning but we now called its bluff. Behind the parking lot and caution signs, some picnic tables rested by an unlit restroom building. We let them rest and followed the moonlight to the breaking waves. They spilled past jagged rocks that jutted through the sand without warning like shards of broken glass scattered after a party that had gotten a little too wild. The waves reached up and up and kept stretching like hungry fingertips. When they could reach no further they retreated empty-handed and prepared for another attack. We followed the shore just beyond the grasp of the hungry waves and studied the shadows under the mesquite trees as much as our naked eyes could allow. Sometimes people sleep here, she said. Comforting.

We settled down far from the shadows in a meadow of moonlight. No one could see us but the hungry waves. We were sitting in their footprints, the sand under us flattened by their grip some minutes, hours before. We couldn’t let our guard down from our predators, but she looked behind us and sprang up.

Shit, she exclaimed. I turned around. Beyond the shadows of mesquite trees stood a small house, dark and lifeless. It was colored a kind of dark red that could have been vibrant when painted on years ago and parched from endless days under the sun. On the porch a once-white hammock swung silently with each gust.

Relax, I said, more to myself than to her. We’ll be more hidden if we sit still. The thick brush concealed us from the land, but we couldn’t escape the beasts ahead, those insatiable fingers of the sea. So spot by spot we moved like migratory birds, looking for the right perch far enough from harm’s way. Within the shadows on the bent, low-lying trunks of some thorny mesquite we rested, lit up a smoke and cracked open some Blue Moon sedatives. Between nervous chatter my gaze drifted through the leaves overhead, back up to the glowing half moon, her craters dimpling the otherwise pure-white sphere like the scars and wrinkles of an aged face.

She hung so quietly, gently leaving her imprint on the humming sea, the hungry fingers, the whispering trees, the lifeless red house, the creaky gate, everything but us and the shadows. Yet none of them could touch her back. So silent, so powerful, so intangible, so --

A preying wave caught me distracted and took its chance to attack. It tumbled towards our shadowy refuge -- how did it find us? -- and we scrambled out of its reach. Walked, briskly but not too swiftly, away from the silent hammock, past the resting picnic tables, past the creaking gate, past the orange glow, up the long, dirt road and through the gate with the swinging red legs. Back in the car, safe under the glow of the moonlight. Back home.

Even paradise has a dark side.

Beach 69, also called Waialea Bay Beach, is located on the Big Island of Hawaii, U.S.A.

Thanks to Akemi.

This is Manila Bay.

It was a cloudy Wednesday morning, the air heavy with warnings of rain. The sky was flatly gray, no way to tell where one cloud ended and the next began.


We arrived at the dock in the fisherfolk village of Navotas at roughly 9:30, where we were to meet a man who calls himself The Chairman. The water level was high that day owing to Sunday's typhoon, which washed piles of debris onto the land by the dock.

Dogs pink with hair loss nosed through the garbage for food, and two barefoot boys shared the weight of a basket as they sifted through old flip flops, plastic bottles, air conditioner filters and salvageable car parts for goods to cash in on at the market. While they would find about 20 pesos (45 cents) of resalable goods in a day over the dry season, typhoons meant a lottery of litter would wash up to land, hopefully up to 100 pesos worth.

Five of us -- Joseph, a local organizer, Ken, an organizer from Canada, friends Khara and John, and me -- stood gazing out onto the smoggy bay where The Chairman would soon guide us.

The bamboo dock had trapped enough rubbish to completely conceal the water beneath. Past that, papers, sandals and fast food wrappings floated sporadically for several yards.

A barefoot boy walked past us onto the dock, and without hesitation dove in and headed for the market to our left, where boats were pulling in to pick up gas or to drop off local catch. We involuntarily shrieked while standing in shock.

Half an hour later (punctual in "Filipino time") The Chairman was at last ready and pulled up one of his four fishing boats. We clumsily piled in behind Captain Chairman and his first mate onto the bamboo-outrigged banca and motored north along the coast.

Sunday's tides not only brought in a treasure of litter for the fishing village's scavenging residents, but left 38 missing and disheveled dozens of the 2,000 homes propped up over the bay.

In front of these stilted houses, clothes hung out to dry under the sunless, humid sky. Bancas hung roped in under the clotheslines or sat on bamboo docks. Groups of friends ignored the debris and floated on inner tubes or hung onto the dock as they passed the time. Families and friends who gathered in the windowless, doorless shelters stood to wave as our boat tooted by.


The banca chugged along the shore to the end of the village until the only noise we heard was the sound of our motor. Stilted homes gave way to quiet trees and shrubs. Small silver fish suddenly skipped in and out of the water alongside our boat, evidencing that the water, however polluted, was certainly habitable enough for the fish that feed Navota's families.

The Chairman, in his late twenties, has been working on the boat for ten years. He says on good days his catch might amount to a good 400 pesos worth (about 9 dollars), enough to feed his small family and the many formerly homeless or abandoned animals that have sought refuge in his home near the dock of Navotas, now far behind us.

As I studied the silent trees on the shore, I noticed the ground beneath them -- a shimmering mass of cans and plastic, the rubbish decomposing just enough to fertilize rows of vegetation. Looking down the shore we spotted the looming neck of a garbage crane.


Joseph, a Navotas native who works with the local Alliance of Fisherfolks in Navotas (ALMANA), says the Philippine government has agreed to let Japan bring its refuse, growing uncontainable on the densely populated island chain, to Manila Bay, where cranes were moving masses of garbage into mounds to make room for more. He also says the Japanese government is already funding the reclamation of an area up the bay in Bulacan to develop resort homes for retired Japanese.

To make the bay a more aesthetic place to live and vacation -- and therefore jump-start a revenue stream -- the city's former mayor put forth a 50 billion-peso ($1.1 billion) reclamation project to clean up and remodel 160 hectares (1.6 square kilometers) of land along the bay, a project that will supposedly employ up to 245,000 Filipinos into the tourism industry.

Condos and hotels will line the bay, inevitably spurring the creation of new restaurants, tours and aquatic sport services. Fishing boats will be replaced by yachts and sailboats, and, according to a brochure illustration, the murky, debris-filled water will transform into a shimmering blue.

The government plans to make way for the new construction by moving the 2,000 or so fisherfolk families -- including The Chairman's -- away from the bay to a location yet to be determined. Groups like ALMANA fear that moving the families inland will strip the fishermen of their livelihoods and force them to clamber for new ways to make money. Protesters of the project argue that the government merely wants to hide its country's poverty in order to attract foreign business.

However, the project is currently at a stalemate, due not to opposition but to a lack of funding.

Rounding back to the dock, we wove through several fish traps-- giant nets propped up by poles that trap thousands of fish. A small stilted house nearby shelters the caretaker who stays there alone for days or weeks at a time to tend to his catch.

At the dock, The Chairman's fishing hands were ready to bring us in, and Mrs. Chairman brought out crackers and Coke as we mingled with her and a woman lounging in a hammock. She was several months pregnant with her second child, but has just once received prenatal care.

We said goodbye and headed to the elite quarters near Fort Bonifacio, or simply "the Fort," where we had gourmet Mexican for about $5, roughly what our friend The Chairman makes in a day. Despite the delicious ingredients in my enchilada, the day's events left a bitter taste in my mouth. I asked my expat friends if they ever felt guilty for indulging in the upper-class life here after all they've seen. It's a reality they've had to come to terms with -- every well-cooked meal has become something served with a tinge of guilt.

Traffic on the way home slowed to a chaos of parked cars, a common occurrence on the packed roads of Manila. We inched past a mass of people surrounding a man lying on the ground, presumably hit by a car. Someone had covered his body with a cardboard refrigerator box, so all we could see were the sandals on his feet as we passed.

I took a deep breath and we tried to change the subject. Three half Filipinos, all pretty grateful for having been born American. Once I got home I picked up a pencil and wrote:

Wednesday, 8/11/10

I am unshakably unsettled. I don't know if it was the sheer amount of garbage that covered the land and sea at the Bay of Manila, or the animals, hairless and starving to death, or the kids taking advantage of Sunday's typhoon by cashing in on the garbage they picked off the land by the dock. Or perhaps it was the kid swimming amid a lake of debris towards the local fisherfolk's market, or the tiny, cracked out pregnant mom playing with her son in a hammock by the bay, or the little girl peeing on the street, or, of course, the dead man lying on the road, shielded from the public eye by a mere cardboard refrigerator box. Causing traffic congestion at Baclaran market. Or maybe it was because most of this I witnessed before lunch, the best Mexican food I've had in a year, which I paid for with my point-earning American Express card...Mexican food was always a guilty pleasure.

Dead guy must have ruined my appetite.

And then I started to cry.

Thanks to Joseph, Khara and John L. for their help.

This is Independence Monument Park.

Ever since the hundred-something brothels in Phnom Penh's notorious Svay Pak district were closed about two years ago, prostitutes have established other stomping grounds around town to solicit their services.

Several brothels on Rue 63 near the outdoor Sorya Shopping Center boutiques are allowed to remain open, their distinct red lights a blatant call-out to any client desiring sex services. While tourists may not find a brothel section in their Lonely Planet guide books, any moto-dop (motorbike driver) or tuk-tuk (carriage taxi) driver can show them the way to a brothel, or one of the many karaoke bars, massage parlors or barber shops that serve as facades to back-door sex services.

Other girls who work independently of these establishments can find up to three or four clients a night by simply standing on the street, faces caked in white makeup and waiting for men on their motor bikes to pull over and ask how much. (The going rate for the girls of Independence Monument Park, it seems, is $15 for the locals and double for a foreigner.)

As I rode on the back of my translator Bunthen's moto early one breezy Friday night, couples strolling through the park began to disperse. We slowed down to survey the park, passing cliques of girls in short skirts who loitered in fours and fives on every other bench. Some spotted our moto approaching and came forward to wave us down; upon seeing me, a female, they shot quizzical looks instead.

After parking the moto on the curb, we sat on a bench and waited. Having been to this park with his chums several times before (not to seek out the girls' services, on his part) Bhunten was sure we would come across the mi kchal (literally mi, "master," and kchal, "wind" in Khmer), the man who coordinates a network of girls and seeks out virgins from the rural provinces to deliver to rich or foreign clients.

The minutes ticked by as we watched men in their 30s, 40s, even 50s, pull over to talk to the girls. Some girls mounted the motos and rode off with their clients; others walked to a building across the street and returned several minutes later to continue the night.

The girls talked to Bhunten freely; but when finding I was a journalist, some demanded money for information, citing experiences with Australian documentary makers who paid them well. One girl wandered away from her pack to squat in the park alone and watch from afar. I walked off as well, watched my translator strike up conversation with three girls, and waited for him to summon me over a few minutes later.

***

This is Ani.

Sporting a low cut white dress, the most vivacious of the three sold her virginity at age 15 for $2500 to a Cambodian man who now lives abroad. A party girl from an early age, Ani had feared punishment from her parents when she stayed out late with her friends.

She flew the coop, moved in with some friends and began selling new, high quality motorbikes to support her lifestyle. She often stayed with her girlfriend, whose parents let them sleep together in their house. However, when she could not pay off the money she owed to friends, she found an opportunity in prostitution four or five months ago as a faster way to pay off her debts.

Though Ani, now 17, no longer sees her girlfriend on a regular basis, she says she enjoys making good money from prostituting. From time to time, the Cambodian man who bought her virginity calls her when he's in town, and she sends that money to her parents. However, she keeps him in the dark about her current occupation, afraid of how he might react.

When I asked what she would be doing if she wasn't working the streets, she shrugged and replied, "Stay at home."

***

This is Asay.

With high heels and a purse that could hold little more than a cell phone and a night's earnings, she donned a short, blue tube dress that exposed a shoulder burn she said she'd gotten from a moto accident. She was less talkative, a 17-year-old from a poor family in a quiet rural province.

A friend in Phnom Penh had invited Asay to visit her in the city, luring her in with ideas about the vibrant party scene and easy living. With no farm, no property and no job opportunities in her province, Asay left home to find a job here, and has been working the streets of Phnom Penh for about five months.

After our brief talks with Ani and Asay, they ran off to win over a man who had just pulled up on his moto. Before she left, Asay mentioned that a man wanted to sell the virginity of her friend's 14-year-old niece, and if we knew any potential customers, we should contact her.

***

This is Srey Oun.

She slouched on the bench next to Bunthen as I sat a few yards behind them. With a couple more years of experience than the other girls, she wore a simple long-sleeved shirt and pants, her hair long and untrimmed.

She got her start on the streets two years ago when a friend told her she could find work in the park. Now at 29, though, it isn't easy finding clients of her own night after night, so she earns a $1 commission helping other girls get work.

If she had the opportunity to learn a new skill like sewing or nail and hair care, she would take it; however, she said, no one is there to help her. With two sons and a daughter to feed and no vocational skills, she can't afford to run her own business or stop to find another job.

***

It turned out that the girls' mi kchal had been arrested a few weeks prior (pimping was finally made illegal in Cambodia in a February 2008 legislative reform) so the girls had to fend for themselves to find work. Bhunten and I left the girls to converse at a nearby cafe.

While none of the girls admitted to being forced into prostitution, personal financial constraints and a lack of vocational skills pinned them to their jobs as women of the night. However, all three seemed to somewhat enjoy their jobs--even Srey Oun, according to Bhunten.

When he asked the girls if they would stop prostituting if an organization offered to train them with a new skill, all three said yes.

Dozens of Cambodian and international NGOs exist in Phnom Penh to aid both voluntary and trafficked sex workers. Even so, upon leaving training and rehabilitation, many girls eventually find themselves back in their former lives--on the streets, in brothels, under glowing red lights, behind barber shops. "They're young," Bhunten reasoned, "so they don't worry about it."

We finished our beers at midnight. On our way home, we rode by the park for one last head count. Fourteen girls (and no one else) perched on the benches; Ani, Asay and Srey Oun were gone.

Thanks to Bhunten for his help translating.

This is Dump Mountain.

Here in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, "one man's trash is another's treasure" is, for many, a way of life. Hundreds of the capital city's poorest residents can be found searching through the Steung Meanchey garbage mound on the western edge of town for food scraps or metal, plastic and trinkets to resell.

The more successful of these scavengers can afford to rent out one of the makeshift houses surrounding the dump for some $5 a month; the rest make their homes on the Mountain.

At the very top of the mound, Hotun (left), 68, and Kioun, 60, raise their 5-year-old grandson Kao in a lonely one-room shack they built here six years ago. They'd originally lived in one of the houses surrounding the dump, but moved up to the top to sell bottles of water for 500 riel, or about 12 cents, to people hunting through the garbage under the afternoon sun.

But the rubbish surrounding their shack has long since been crunched and burned down to bits of melted plastic and shards of glass, and the new trash that people hunt through is dumped several yards away. Since the couple now has no source of income, they don't eat every day and must depend on friends to give them water and food like fish.

In the back of their home are a few odds and ends, a kerosene stove and a bowl full of bright yellow bananas. On the mats to the side, two women who live near the dump took a break from the afternoon heat during their search through the rubble. Suddenly the cry of a baby erupted from a small hammock hanging in the middle of the room and his mother rose to quiet him.

Hotun and Kioun came from poor families in the Takeo province and moved to the capital in 1979 in hopes of better job opportunities. Kioun left a brother in Takeo who she hasn't seen or heard from since she left. She has since acquired a leg injury that inhibits her from walking.

At the top of this mountain, her shack an island in a sea of glittering, shattered glass, Kioun can never aspire to leave.

Thanks to Philipin for his help translating.

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.