Martial law had just been lifted and back then, to enter on a tourist visa, you had to show a return-trip ticket. So that's what I bought, even though I had no intention of returning to the US after my three-month-one-time-renewable stint was up. My plan was to sell my ticket to someone else and use the money to buy a ticket to wherever I was going next. So I put an ad in a local English-language paper and a young American guy responded to it. He paid me half the money up front, with a promise to pay the balance after I went to the airport with him and checked in – since the ticket was of course still in my name. 

On the day of his flight, the American guy and I took the bus out to Chiang Kai Shek International Airport. I took the ticket up to the airline counter, checked myself in, and then handed him the ticket and he handed me the rest of the money.