Doing Double Duty (2/2)
Take a “volunteer vacation” and benefit others

Less than $1 a day
A typical job in the Angkor region pays only $100 a month. Those who speak English, however, can find work in tourist hotels paying as much as $250 a month, a small fortune in an economy in which more than a third of the population subsists on less than $1 a day.
Still, even for the higher earners, it's a rough existence---a point that hits home when the group is whisked into the countryside to visit a typical village. The guide points to the rickety, one-room huts that house families of five, six or even eight people. Built on wooden stilts to keep occupants dry during the rainy season, the thatched-roof huts have flimsy walls made of palm leaves. There's no electricity, running water or toilets. And the "kitchen" is a fire circle in the dirt.
Much can be done in a week
Visiting such sites long has been part of the volunteer vacation experience. But it also has brought criticism from some. Even some of the participants on this trip are conflicted. "I felt a bit embarrassed, like it was a show for us," says Gabrielle Duchesne, 26, of Toronto, Canada. "But…if we can go back and find a way to volunteer, to donate, to integrate giving into our lives, then it was worth it."
On the final day, the group meets grateful recipients of the wheelchairs assembled during a single morning. Some have waited years for a wheelchair, which costs many times the $20-a-month stipend that one disabled recipient says he has received since stepping on a mine in 1987.
"At first I was nervous, but it was a happy occasion, not sad," Duchesne says afterward. The wheelchair recipients "left better than they had arrived, and that's the reason we're here."

Vocabulary Focus

rickety (adj)--- in bad condition and therefore weak and likely to break
flimsy (adj)--- very thin, or easily broken or destroyed
stipend (n)--- a fixed regular income