Visiting Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand over the last four weeks permanently changed my life. I discovered I enjoyed so many new things I'd never even thought about before. I trekked. I toured temples. I cavorted with elephants.

With all the vast new possibilities now open to me, it's understandable I came home with a great new hobby:

Sitting in between a couple on an airline flight and acting really creepy.

See, there's this tactic that "smart" travelers use to get more room on an airline flight. In the center section of a plane, there are usually three seats across. If you're traveling with a partner, you'll automatically be assigned two adjacent seats, which means there will still be an aisle seat available. Aisle seats are perfectly acceptable to the single traveler, since there's a person on one side and an aisle on the other, and odds are somebody will take that seat. Which means you and your partner won't have much spare room.

"Smart" travelers, then, sign up for the two aisle seats, leaving the middle seat empty. Why? Because no single traveler is going to take that middle seat, squashed in between two strangers, unless every other option is exhausted. And planes never get that full. In the very slim chance that somebody does take the middle seat, the couple make an offer to the single person: swap that middle seat for either aisle. Only an idiot would refuse.

Best case scenario: the devious duo get an entire row to themselves. Worst case scenario: they sit next to each other, in two seats. You know, like everyone else.

Like geckos, lunch meat, and white people with dreadlocks, this strategy really annoys me. It rewards conniving folks while regular people get screwed. During a nine-hour layover in Bangkok, I devised a way to throw a wrench into the works.

I ran over to the American Airlines counter where a clerk who looked like Amy Winehouse in a polyester uniform finally deigned to look at me. "I need to change seats," I said. "Is there a row where the two aisle seats are taken but the middle is available?" She shot me a curious glare, like this was the one question she hadn't heard a million times before. She flipped through some screens on her computer before announcing that roughly a hundred and forty rows fit this criterion.

I told her to pick one at random and stick me in the middle, and when the flight boarded, some five hours later, my fingers were crossed and my new boarding pass was clutched to my chest. Spotting the matched pair of hetero, thirtyish white people on both ends of my row, I knew I'd hit pay dirt.

I shoved my oversized bag into the overhead compartment and stepped over the man's legs into the middle seat. In my peripheral vision I noticed him shooting me an irritated look, but I ignored it and grabbed the Sky Mall magazine. I was just about to buy a baseball cap that cures baldness when the inevitable question came. "Hey, you want to swap seats with me?" the guy asked. "That way you can sit on the aisle, and I can sit next to my wife."

I shrugged. "I'm cool," I said, flipping to the next page in my magazine and spotting a toaster you can use underwater. "I like being the meat in a hot-couple sandwich," I added with a wink. I pulled a bag of peanut M&Ms out of my pocket and tossed a handful into my mouth, then choked like my throat hadn't been expecting food. "You two having a fight or something?" I asked, feigning cluelessness. "Well, maybe I can cheer you up. Look at these drawings I did of Spock and Captain Kirk making out."

Whatever the opposite of a high-five is, these two were doing it. "We'd really appreciate it if you'd switch with one of us," the wife said. "Sixteen hours is a long time to fly without talking."

"I'll relay anything you want to tell your hubby," I said. "Even your naughtiest thoughts." I moved my face about four inches from hers and inhaled deep, though my nose didn't register anything other than the half-cup of Paco Rabanne "One Million" I'd doused myself with at Duty-Free. "Besides, it looks like you enjoy rubbing up against strangers. Unless something else wore off all the God-given hair on your arms?"

I'd barely gotten the words out when the woman switched off her overhead light, slapped on an eye mask, and feigned sleep. Hubby quickly followed suit. With his tousled hair and strong jaw, he actually wasn't bad looking, though everybody looks better with a Fu Manchu. "I'll be cool!" I yelled at him after earplugs went in. "I can climb over you if I need to. Or, you know, if I want to get out."

They simultaneously disappeared beneath blankets and I knew for the next sixteen hours that would be that. Swapping Sky Mall for a copy of Real Simple, I congratulated myself. They'd never try that little ploy again, I thought. I'd taught them an important lesson. And in the end, I'd probably improved their vacation, because what is travel about unless it's finding out what the rest of the world is like?