Greetings from Incheon airport in Seoul, where the internet is nearly cheaper than water. Three bucks for an hour on the net and two bucks for a half-liter bottle of Evian.

My 13 hours on Korean Airlines from JFK were mostly spent watching movies. If you add it up, I may have seen them cheaper in the air than if I had seen them all at the Cineplex: Kite Runner, Juno, No Country For Old Men, and Becoming Jane (I was getting desperate). I actually did get about 45 minutes of sleep thanks to 2 Tylenol PM and Michele’s blow-up neck pillow thingie she lent me (thanks!). When I wasn’t watching a movie or knocked out in drooling sleep I did laps around the plane. Thank god for giant 747-400’s.

(There are nonstop announcements here, in Korean and English. The English sounds like pre-recorded snippets, such as “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.” and “Korean airline flight…” and “…has been delayed.” The voice sounds exactly like the female machine voice on the 4-5-6 line – “The next stop…is…14th Street, Union Square.”)

Anyway, here I am. Despite my aching muscles and sleepy head, I’m in heaven. In fact, as soon as I got into the taxi on 1st Ave, my past year of micromanaged bullshit, humiliating condescension, and in the end, pathetic cowardice…it all just melted away.

On to Bangkok.

For those keeping track, here’s a preliminary itinerary:
Wednesday 4/9 arrive in Bangkok
Friday 4/11 train north to Chiang Mai

• …hiking and whatnot in northern Thailand

Thursday 4/17 back to Bangkok to catch a flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia

• …tour temples of Angkor

Tuesday 4/22 back to Bangkok
Wednesday 4/23 to Rangoon, Burma (aka Myanmar)

• …three weeks in Burma

Wednesday 5/14 to some island in southern Thailand via Bangkok

• …three-ish weeks scuba diving

Friday, 6/6-ish back to the US!