Travel to Asia to Experience How the Other Side of the World Lives

Her smile still haunts me. Two teeth in a wrinkled, brown face in a body bent double from years of working in the rice fields. Leaning on a wooden stick, her hands outstretched, begging for anything we could give. Soaked to the skin after standing in a pouring rainstorm for an hour on a dirt road leading up to the Phnom Tameo wildlife refuge.

She was one of dozens. An old woman amidst children, handicapped and struggling. All lining the road to the 30-minute drive which led to the animal park. They came from the city on weekends, we were told, in hope of gathering a few Riel from visitors who took pity on their plight.

And take pity we did. How could you not? Here were we, four comfortable westerners from across the world, where we live in a world of plenty, spending $30 on a day's tuktuk ride to the park. How could we close our eyes and our hearts to people who had broken arms, crippled backs and unseeing eyes and whose sole hope lay in the kindness of strangers?

It had started as an outing to the zoo and turned into something so much more.

The wild tigers, eagles, bears and elephants we saw were magnificent but they paled in significance to the impact of the human sights we were exposed to.

And, every time we handed over a small offering to a person on the road, the same thing happened. They smiled. Wrinkled faces softened, tiny brown eyes sparkled and old men bowed their heads in gratitude.

As we drove along, humbled by the sight, we asked ourselves "What do they have to smile about?". And every time, they smiled.

Later, our tuktuk driver, Som On, made an unscheduled stop on the way back to Phnom Penh. He wanted us to see his home.

We pulled into a driveway and walked with him as he tentatively wove a path through an alleyway in a city suburb. His 8-year-old son stood naked ahead of us as he poured buckets of water over his body and giggled as we said hello. Som On led us into a doorway where his wife greeted us in their home - a dark room half the size of our bedroom, one tiny window with bars and a thin linoleum floor.

They beckoned us to sit on the floor mat, brought us bottles of cold water and plugged in two floor fans to cool us. Som On apologized they had nothing to give us and told us he lived here with his wife, two children and younger brother and was saving to build a house on a plot of land he'd bought five years earlier. It was his dream to build this house and was hoping to save the $4,000 he needed in the next year.

After we spent a few minutes of socializing with his family, Som On whisked us off to see his land. Driving through a garbage-strewn alleyway off the main street, he pulled up in front of a tiny sandy heap. A space smaller than the space I used to park my car back home. This was his land. The place he hoped to create a home for his family.

Our hearts ached for him and for the people we'd seen on the road to the animal refuge. Gentle, kind souls who reached out to us and lived lives so far removed from our existence. A silence descended upon us as we drove the rest of the way home, trying to digest and find some semblance of reason in the experiences of the day.

As for Som On - He smiled.

Having worked as a journalist in South Africa then in the corporate world in the U.S., Gabrielle Yetter founded The Brightside Group in 2009 which produced the Screaming Pillow - a novelty item providing a vehicle for people to "let it out" after Gabrielle lost her sister and nephew in a car crash. Gabrielle started her professional career writing for The Star newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa, and was the "Action Girl" columnist for The Evening Post in Port Elizabeth. After moving to the U.S. she worked briefly in public relations, then founded The Ultimate Dining Guide of San Diego.

She recently moved with her husband in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where she is volunteering for an NGO and exploring this fascinating part of the world. Follow her on Twitter (@Gabster2) and read about her adventures and challenges at http://meanderthals.posterous.com