January 17-18, 2019

Airport security fears were completely unjustified in our particular case... So we headed to the bar and relaxed for about three hours. No hard feelings, better safe than sorry!

Brooke and I couldn’t sit together on the plane, but I finessed my way into a seat by Olivia. We shared a row with a 34 year old South Korean man who was flying home after several months abroad in S. America. He showed me ALL of his pictures from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, etc.. I was sad for his vacation to be over and felt guilty that mine was just starting. He said he had to go to work the next day.
You wouldn’t believe what he did next. This man pulled out his phone to watch downloaded videos of people playing Starcraft. RECENT videos. I lost all my marbles and hammered him with questions about how can this possibly be recent and are people FOR REAL still playing!? He said “yes yes yes” and spilled the Korean tea about the whole situation. We were watching ‘The Flash’ play; he’s the best player in the world. No ‘black sheep wall’ or ‘show me the money’ allowed, their competitive program prohibits it. I crowded him to watch over his shoulder for longer than he probably expected or appreciated :-).

Fourteen hours later we land in Seoul, South Korea. This was a gorgeous airport. Trees and layover lounges, virtual gyms and nap centers. We had 3 hours until our next plane. We spent it taking turns trying to find water.

We were starved and thirsty and people kept trying to throw meat in our dishes but we finally made it to Bangkok 2 hours later than I’d expected.