Hi there, I've been doing lots of research to ensure that we have an amazing honeymoon and could use some more help!
We arrive in Bangkok on September 5 at midnight, and depart on the 22nd at 8 am, so we essentially have 16 good days to work with.
The plan was to spend the first two nights in Bangkok, so we can stop traveling a while (we are coming from Baltimore, USA and it will take 24 hours!), to refresh and do minor sight seeing, then we will go preferably first to the islands.
I know a lot of people start in Chiang Mai and head south, but we will be DYING for some R&R after this wedding planning, so I don't think we can change that!
I have read many reports on the weather to know that Koh Samui is better that time of year as far as monsoon. We do want to spend some of our time in a nice resort (not TOO expensive) and have plenty of activities and good food and beach days! I thought maybe 4 days on Samui and a few days then on Phangan might be nice, I heard Phangan was better to get away from the hawkers and tourist traps? At the same time I don't want to be bored...
We REALLY want to see some nice beaches though, and all I keep hearing is "phi phi".
Perhaps we could find a way to get to Phi Phi from samui, but it seems that it might require an entire day of travel-- is this true? I know there are flights to Phuket from Samui for ~$80 per person one-way. Unfortunately from there, we'd have to get to the ferry pier and catch the boat to phi phi, provided the weather is decent and the boats are even running in low season!
One thing I do not want to do is spend all this $$ and effort getting to the west coast only to have it rain for the majority of the 3 days, wishing I hadn't done that and instead explored other areas closer to samui or on the mainland.
Suggestions please??
Finally, I want to ask about Chiang Mai-- from what I read it is a more quaint town in the north, and there are lots of treks that jump off form there. It's our honeymoon so I'm not sure just how into trekking we might be, but I wouldn't mind some good cultural experiences to help make our trip memorable. I certainly think the elephant rides and bamboo rafting sounds fun, as does exploring the hill tribes areas and all. But if this can be done from another town closer to Bangkok, that might be an option for us, to avoid taking more flights.
I don't want to miss out on anything extraordinary because this might be our only trip to Thailand, but at the same time we don't have infinite $$ and certainly not infinite time. Any suggestions? Thanks SO much!