Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report-BKK and Samui

I’m providing a trip report for others as a way of thanking everyone who helped with my planning! A little background- we are 8 women in our late 20’s, most had some travel experience in moderate to better places, but none of us had been to Asia. We are all MBA students, so cost was a factor to some extent. We were on our way to meeting our school group in China (I’ll be posting that trip report soon) and went to Thailand as a “pre-trip”. We wanted to see the main sights in BKK and then sit on the beach for a few days and were in the country from January 2-7, 2006.

As an overview, we liked Thailand- cheap, we felt safe, nice weather, great beaches and hotels (Holiday Inn Bangkok and Chaweng Buri in Ko Samui). Food was good but not a big variety (either seafood or thai). Service was mostly decent, but not fabulous. People were friendly and helpful, very few problems with language. Advice: verify cab prices before getting in and take advantage of the cheap massages!

Bangkok:
We flew into BKK from various US cities but all arrived around midnight on January 2. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Bangkok and I had arranged for a hotel shuttle to pick us up. Had we arrived at a more normal time of day we would’ve taken cabs, but arriving in a strange city at midnight as young women, we paid extra for the shuttle. It cost about $12 per person one way.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Bangkok and were quite pleased with it. It’s a very new, clean, modern hotel (I believe it’s a remodel). Rooms were small but perfectly adequate. We only ate breakfast at the hotel, but it was quite good and plentiful. It was about $8pp.
The location was great, across the street from two different malls which offered a few restaurants. Catching a cab for sightseeing or other restaurants was easy, and we didn’t feel like we were getting overcharged for using the hotel cabs. (Even if we did, a lot of our cab rides were only $2 or $3 total!)

The service at the hotel was impressive. I guess my experience with Holiday Inns in the US was one of mediocrity. The staff at HI BKK was very helpful, both with restaurant and spa recommendations, as well as helping me track down my luggage that had been lost en flight. Because of losing my luggage we had to switch our Ko Samui flight (I figured I’d never get it if we moved locations) and the hotel let me get on their concierge computer to change our flights (The business center had closed for the night). Note there’s also a super cheap internet café not even a block away-way cheaper than their business center!

As for sights, we basically did the whirlwind in one day. We took a taxi to the Grand Palace (and Emerald Buddha). We hired a guide at the entrance for $10 but we didn’t think it was worth it. Her English wasn’t great and couldn’t answer any questions we had. We spent maybe 2 hours at the Palace, then walked (8 minutes) to the Reclining Buddha. That’s quick and easy to see, but worthwhile. We picked a random place for lunch, then walked over to the riverfront. We got a little lost, but it still was only a 20 minute walk.
We wandered through the market to get to the pier, then hired a klong. We paid about $9pp, which was a little more than I thought we’d pay. This was a very worthwhile tour, interesting to see the canals and how the neighborhoods change from poor shack to lavish temple to subdivision style house. We got off at the Wat Arun temple, but did not pay the entrance fee. We could see enough of it from outside the entrance. We went past the Royal Barge museum but it was closed for a public holiday. Then we had the klong driver drop us off at the Sheraton for a cocktail (we’d arranged this with him at the beginning).Then we taxied back to the hotel and napped! (I can’t remember the restaurant we went to for dinner)

That night we took a cab to the Suan Lum Night Market. This was fun to see-lots of stalls selling souvenirs and clothing. There’s an area of outdoor bars/patios within the market that we didn’t find until we were ready to leave. Note that all the taxis charge way more to take you away from there than to get you to the market. We shouldn’t have complained, it was still only $4 or $5, but it was the principle!  We spent the next day at the pool and went for spa treatments at a place the hotel recommended.

We liked the city, found it easy to get around with public transportation, little to no issues with the language, didn’t find it to dirty (but the smells can be overwhelming at times…mostly from the street food). We also felt safe, even when we went off in groups of 2 or 3 (we did stick together at night, not because we didn’t feel safe, but just to be smart travelers)

Ko Samui:
We flew to Ko Samui on Bangkok Airways and were very happy with the quality, efficiency and price ($90pp) of the flight. We stayed at the Chaweng Buri Resort, which is right in the middle of Chaweng Beach. We paid $120/night for triple rooms (including breakfast and airport transfers), during New Years week, so the price was good enough. The rooms (actually, individual bungalows) were not fancy, but they were clean and spacious. Each had a little deck with rocking chairs. The pool was very pretty and we used it one afternoon. We did not find the service great, almost surly at times-this included the front desk, the pool bar and towel guy. (This was a bit unexpected because dealing with them online to make the reservations was great.) And forget about getting a chair on the beach. We were up at seven or earlier most every morning and all the chairs were gone by then! The beach/town was not overly crowded though, even though we were there in peak season. We felt we had plenty of space to stretch out, as long as we didn’t want beach chairs from our hotel.

On the plus side, the location of the hotel was fabulous! On one side of the property we were on the center on the beach, the other side was the street with all the shops and bars/restaurants. The property was deep enough that we didn’t get any street noise. The beach had very nice sand, light blue water (like southern Florida, not Caribbean blue) and was crescent shaped. It was a perfect beach for walking or running. Plenty of $5 massage places on the beach and in town. We liked the shopping-a mix of some junky souvenir stores, some quality independent boutiques and quite a few art galleries. There was an internet café across from the hotel. We walked almost everywhere.
We’d often eat lunch on the beach, at a random beach bar. The food was never great, but it was cheap and we could go in our swimsuits. For dinner one night we went to Eat Sense. This would be great for a romantic dinner-the location is on the beach with lanterns hanging from the palm trees. Food was great and entrees were $3-$5. I recommend this restaurant.

Another night, we went to the Cliff House. We had to take a cab-it was about 15 minutes away. The location of this place is fabulous and we wish we had gone during the day as it sits up on a cliff. The cuisine was upscale/trendy as was the restaurant décor. Prices were more than elsewhere on the island but we still ate and drank for under $15/person. The only problem with this place was they accused us of shorting the bill by $25(US). This is basically impossible because three different people in our party counted the money before we left it on the table under a heavy glass-here was our mistake. We’re fairly certain they pocketed the extra money after we had gotten up and then made us pay more. I think they figured they could swindle a large group. For this reason, I would not recommend this restaurant. Further, the cab they called for us also tried to argue with us to pay him more than he quoted when we got in the cab.

The unique aspect of our trip to Ko Samui was our elephant trek. We booked it through the hotel for about $30pp, which included transportation to and from the sight. The actual trek path is not all that pretty and don’t think you’ll go past the waterfall shown in the brochures-they point out a waterfall that you have to squint to see from the path. But the experience is well worth it. You sit in little baskets, and sometimes the guide lets you sit on the elephant’s head and “drive”. We had great fun and looked at it as a once in a lifetime experience.

All in all, we really like Ko Samui and would go back if it wasn’t so far away from the states. Staying on this island also made it easy for us to catch a direct flight to Hong Kong (our next stop). Thanks to everyone on Fodor’s who helped me plan such a great trip!