Incheon my way home

"Lian, pull over!" I shout.

"What?" she calls back over her shoulder. "I am not understand."

"Pull over! You know, Pull over! I mean, stop ... motor-bike! I don't have my reading glasses!"

I see the Night Bazaar through new eyes now. It's still tacky.

Finally she veers off the road and parks. It is early evening on the main drag along the hated Night Bazaar, tourists and tuk-tuks everywhere. I rifle my backpack, my pockets -- no readers. Damn, I must have left them in the locker room at the gym. Lian waits with the bike as I rush back to Centara Hotel's fitness club three blocks away. No luck. But on my way back, on the corner where I hopped on Lian's bike, there they are ... or what's left of them. No frames, just two chewed-up lenses, dead in the street.

And so my next and final day in Chiang Mai is spent on an emergency quest for an eyeglasses shop that can turn around a decent pair of prescription readers in a pinch. While we wait for my new specs, we pop over to a nearby spa run by a friend of Lian's for Thai massage -- a nice little final-day splurge for all of seventeen dollars for two people, including overly generous tip.

Sunday evening I bid adieu once more to Lian and walk down the lane to catch my prearranged Red Car to the airport. Valuable travel tip: when flying to or from Thailand, avoid Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport if you can and instead aim for the much more laid-back Chiang Mai International Airport. Customs and security take five minutes, tops, and you don't feel like you're walking for miles to get in or out.

Now I'm midway through a 13-hour layover at Incheon-Seoul Airport in South Korea ... and loving it. As it happens, there's a gorgeous transit hotel in the airport, just a five-minute walk to my gate: modern and comfortable room, shower, TV, business center with all-important Internet -- perfect! I'll need all the R and R comfort I can get: I'm assigned a middle seat on the long leg back to the states, and it's a full flight. (I already checked.) Probably stuck between Haystack Calhoun and Refrigerator Perry. Wish me luck.