Thailand - Part 2 - Ko Samui

Ko Samui was my favorite part of the trip, and probably one of my favorite places that I've ever visited. I feel like I just need to start this post with a picture... 

It's pretty easy to love a place that is this beautiful. Our resort we stayed at was the Renaissance Ko Samui Resort and Spa... and it was amazing! We decided to splurge a little bit on this part of the trip since we were only going to be there two days, so we ended up getting a villa with our own private pool.

The nice thing about Thailand is that even though we "splurged" on this villa, it still was very cheap compared to a normal hotel room anywhere else we could have traveled. Enough about that though...

The first day in Ko Samui, we explored the resort (and probably looked so out of place with our wide eyes and chins hitting the floor) and then we decided we wanted to explore a national park nearby. The resort set up a taxi for us and took us to the park. When we got dropped off, the first thing we saw (after the amazing jungle we would be hiking through) was elephants!!!! The one thing I wanted to see while in Thailand was an elephant and I got to see a bunch up close! They were doing elephant rides but we decided to just hike instead. The elephants were so cute though!

Next time I go to Thailand (and I sure hope there is a next time!) I will be riding an elephant. Now, on to the hike. We were hiking up to a waterfall in the jungle and had a great time! I love hiking and exploring so it was a great way to spend the day. The jungle was beautiful and the views were amazing. 

There was also a totally random mini-waterpark inside the national park (?) with two big slides. Seemed a little weird to me but it sure would have been refreshing after a long, hot hike! When we got to the waterfall, of course we wanted to hike more. So... we found this little off-path trail that took us up higher and higher. We literally had to pull ourselves up the mountain with ropes and branches to get up. We ventured about half way to the top before decided it was time to head back down. Getting down was just as hard... I felt like I was rock climbing! It was so much fun though (and I didn't fall, yay!). After the hike, we headed back to the hotel to enjoy happy hour and an amazing sunset over the water.

On our second day in Ko Samui, we signed up for a speed boat tour through Ang Thong National Marine Park. This was one of the places I really wanted to see while in Ko Samui but to get there, you really need to book a tour. We wanted to kayak and snorkel as well so we found the perfect tour!  The guides were awesome and we got to do so much in a short day. We started the trip by taking the speed boat out about one hour towards the national marine park. Our first stop was snorkeling at Koh Wao. They gave us or snorkel gear and we dove right in! The corral and fish were so pretty - we had a great time swimming around and looking under water. 

The next stop of the trip was to hike up to a lookout point at one of the islands. We climbed tons and tons of stairs (seems to be a reoccurring thing on this trip...) to where we could see many of the islands, the beautiful water, and a lagoon.

 Our next stop was a small fisherman's village on the only inhabited island in the Ang Thong National Marine Park. There were children selling crafts, people just hanging around, and a delicious traditional Thai lunch (including yummy shrimp!). 

Last but not least... kayaking. Kayaking was awesome! We were give a couple of hours to explore in the kayaks or lounge on the beach. We decided to kayak first and found some cool caves and rock formations in the water. 

On the way back, we saw a rope dangling from a rock so of course Will had to climb the rope and jump off the rock :) 

We lounged on the beach for a bit, then it was time to head back. I was so exhausted that I dozed off on the boat ride home. To end the night, we had dinner at the resort restaurant. 

The next morning, it was time to fly back to Bangkok. We were both very sad to leave this beautiful, tropical paradise. I would absolutely love to return again and explore all that the island has to offer.

Overall, Thailand was definitely a success. I hope to spend about 2-3 weeks in Thailand again in the near future to see more! Hope you enjoyed this post and all the pictures :)

Love,

RLD

Thailand - Part 1 - Bangkok

Beware... these posts will be quite long! 

For Eid (an Islamic holiday in the UAE), we were given 9 days of holiday. This is unheard of - normally they only get 4-5 days off so I knew I needed to take advantage! Will was already planning on coming later in October but since I had such a long break, we decided it would be a perfect time to travel! As you can tell by the title of the blog... we chose Thailand! We had been talking about going there so it was the perfect choice. (PS. most of the pictures were taken by Will - his photographs are awesome! Much better than the iPhone)

Our flight had a connection through China on both ends of the trip. The layovers were in Kunming, China, which was a rural town and very few people spoke English. When we got off the plane, we were planning to go straight to our gate since we couldn't go through customs. Americans need a travel visa to enter the country and it takes days to get before the trip. If you enter without it, you can pay huge fines or go to jail. Well... we got off the plane (without the travel visa) and the workers kept pushing us through customs. We knew we weren't supposed to enter the country but they didn't give us a choice. We had to go through customs then go back through check-in and security to catch our flight to Bangkok. We were both very worried. They ended up giving us a temporary 24 hour visa so it ended up being ok, but it was very stressful for a while. The way back was even worse. We had a 22-hour layover and didn't make the best decision about where to stay that night - some airport worker (we think...) encouraged us to stay at this cheap hotel in "town" so we got into this sketchy van, the van picked up two random girls wandering down the road, and got dropped off in this tiny rundown town where nobody spoke English. At that point, we decided we wanted to go back to the airport to stay at the airport hotel but since no one spoke English, it took many hand motions and to get back. The story is much crazier but I don't want to have to relive it to write about it. Basically, I won't be traveling to China for a very long time after that experience. 

We finally made it to Bangkok and took the sky train and metro to our hotel. We stayed at the Grand Millenium in the business district of Bangkok so it was really nice! We were exhausted that night so we didn't do much except plan our next few days in Thailand. We wanted to go to Khao Yai National Park but it was too far for just a day trip. Then we decided we would go to Ayuthaya but found out it was flooded. Our next option actually worked out! We went on a boat hop-on/hop-off tour on the Chao Phraya River where we were able to visit all the temples. The temples were amazing! I really loved getting to explore Wat Pho, which has the giant Reclining Buddha. The reclining Buddha is supposed to represent the passing of Buddha into nirvana. The temples and grounds were beautiful and very fun to explore! 

We got back on the boat when it stopped at the dock again and headed to another temple - Wat Arun, Temple of Dawn. 

We climbed tons and tons of stairs to get to the top area (well, it was more like pulling ourselves up the stairs with the railings... it was very steep!). There were beautiful views of the river and city from the top. We had to get a few pictures from the top!

Oh! I almost forgot about the flower market!! Off one of the docks where the boat dropped us off, it said there was a flower market about 1km down the road. I love flowers so we decided to head that way. After walking a while, we thought we were either lost or that it was way farther than we thought so we got a tuk tuk (a bike taxi thing) to take us to the flower market. We went all around then when he dropped us off, we realized all we needed to do before we had got on the tuk tuk was cross the street and we would have been there. At least we got to experience a tuk tuk! The market was great and the flowers were beautiful. They were SO cheap too! Large assortments and arrangements of flowers were less than $10. It's too bad I couldn't bring some back to Abu Dhabi with me! 

That pretty much wraps up our Bangkok adventure except for the hookers. Yes, thats right. Hookers. Funny story - we were walking back from the metro one day and saw this restaurant/bar called Country Road. We thought it would be a nice place to get dinner and drinks that night so we got all ready and headed down there. Something seemed a little off about it when there were about 10 girls standing out front with lanyards with some card in it, but we thought they were just waitresses. Well, they may have been waitresses but we definitely stumbled upon the red light district. We realized soon after sitting down that the girls were there for single men (that's all I'm going to say about that..). Then, we decided to wander down the street after dinner just to see what other crazy things were going on. Well, it was all strip clubs and more hookers. And some were just walking around half naked in heels. Don't worry, I'll spare you from seeing the pictures. It was quite an interesting night that's for sure!

Can't wait to write about Ko Samui next. It was by far my favorite part of the trip :) 

Love,

RLD