Koh Samui ... Here We Come!!

Good Morning from Bangkok! We were up at 5:30am ... but ... that was actually phenomenal given we went to bed about 10 hours prior. I was worried when I awoke at 12:57am that I was going to be up for the day, but I dozed back off until something really weird happened! At 2:00am, all the overhead lights in our room came on. The light was so bright that it startled both of us. We have absolutely no clue how or why, but it happened. After a little while, I was able to fall back to sleep and we both able to stay in the bed for almost another four hours!!

Speaking of the bed ... it is the largest king size bed we have ever slept in. I believe they pushed two queen beds together. This morning, the old boy teased that he'd considered packing a lunch in order to make the long journey over to my side!! 🤣

It's an exciting day today. Today, we finally get to our first "live away" destination. I even put mascara on! 😉 It is wonderful to know that we will be staying in one place for the next couple of weeks. We also get to meet our tour guide and maybe some of our fellow Wheel & Anchor guests! Here's hoping that we will hit it off with some of our fellow travellers! And, with extra good luck, maybe some of them will play bridge!

We were starving by 7:00am so we headed down to breakfast right away! And, oh my gosh .............. it was SO, SO, SO good!! Although no bacon could be found, we discovered the most amazing mix of Asian and American cuisine. I forgot just how delicious those little Chinese pork buns are!! I forget what they are called. Is it dim sum or something like that??🤷‍♀️

We wanted to get down to breakfast early because we thought we were going to need to have our lunch before we took the 12:30pm shuttle back to the airport for our 3:15pm flight to Koh Samui! We had all kinds of time to kill before our shuttle, so I even ended up playing some bridge online!!

However, we changed our minds and decided to head to the airport a bit earlier. Thankfully, the hotel was able to change our reservation and accommodate our desire to leave earlier. The baggage allowances for Bangkok Airlines (as cited on their website) concerned me a little bit. It seemed like we might have to check our carry-on bags due to weight restrictions, rather than size. They warned that bags that were over the weight restrictions would be charged extra. You could prepay ... which would be cheaper ... but, I didn't have a clue how heavy our carry-on bags were.

So, we anticipated we might be standing in long lines to get our boarding passes and then have our bags weighed to see if we needed to check them. It was so lucky that that there was no line to speak of and they didn't weigh our bags at the ticket counter. She just said yes when I asked if we could carry our bags on. It concerned me a little that she didn't even look at the size of them or ask to weight them.

They are normal carry-on sized bags, but as I said, their website sounded like they only allowed only one bag of no more than 7kg max for carry on. And, uhm ... we also had our small personal backpacks. You can just imagine what my anxious mind was doing with all this uncertainty!!! 🙄 We carried on (sorry for the crappy pun!) towards security screening despite my anxiousness.

It seemed reasonable to think we could lunch at at the airport once we were through security. As it turns out though ... there are no food services beyond security in the domestic gate in Bangkok. So, we opted to take one scrambled egg croissant at a particular kiosk because .... they had some white wine! 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

That was the good news. The bad news was the price ... $37CAD for one sandwich and two 4-5 oz glasses of wine! Once again, I probably should have checked the price before we ordered ... but in reality, I might have ordered it anyway! Sheesh. I wish I didn't have such a pricey palate!

At any rate ... I was sizing up everyone's bags while we waited in the security line up. We were in the minority. Most people just had one personal item. There were a few with much smaller carry-on bags, but I was convinced they met the 7kg limit. So ... I was worried.

As it turned out, we made it through the security and ended up at our gate. They announced that they would check any bags that were too big. My heart raced a bit. The old boy annoyed me with his "it'll be fine" attitude. Sometimes I am so jealous of people who don't get anxious. It strikes me that they must lead much more enjoyable lives. Or ... they partner up with someone who will do the worrying for them.🤣

I could hardly barely stand it as we proceeded up to the gate for boarding. I could see they were eying our bags. I dreaded it was just a matter of time before we were busted and our carry-ons were apprehended and it would cost more than wine when we were forced to check them at the gate!

No one said anything. Then, as we moseyed down the long corridor to the plane ... there was another employee ... guarding the doorway. Ahhhhhh .... my anxious mind reeled ... THIS is where they are going to snatch our bags from us and drain our wallets. But ........nope. She said nothing either. 🤔

We got on that plane without any shoes dropping whatsoever!!! Seriously!! What a delight that was!! I am sure all my fretting saved the day, right??? 🥴

And then, something wonderful happened! Bangkok Air served us a hot meal of Thai noodles with chicken and vegetables during a 55 minute flight!! Sheesh. WestJet and Air Canada offer you a little bag of pretzels OR a cookie. We got the full meal ... complete with metal cutlery! It was pretty darned impressive!

We landed in Samui and because its an island ... the runway is so short that we shot past the terminal and then had to do a U-Turn on the tarmac to go back to the airport terminal. And ... it is the most stunningly gorgeous airport. Someone said it has been deemed the most beautiful airport in the world. I wish I could have taken pictures. Maybe I'll try to take some on our way to Bali??

And, when we got to the terminal, they brought out some open-air carts to bring us from the tarmac to the terminal. It was so neat!! There were lots of rain clouds, but we stayed dry.

Our shuttle was waiting for us and we arrived at our hotel by 5:30pm. We were an hour late, but our first impressions of Koh Samui were so impressive!! The clouds broke open on us as we were walking to our room, but it didn't matter. We were just so awed by our gorgeous surroundings. We took a few minutes to sit on our deck and admire our view. I found a little bottle of wine in the fridge!! Yay. I didn't look at the price. The old boy enjoyed a Singha. It was sublime to finally arrive. No more travelling for two weeks. 🙌

And then, we went down to the oceanside restaurant to have dinner. The wind and threat of rain didn't stop us from sitting outside. It was still 29 degrees!! We thoroughly enjoyed our food and found ourselves tucked into bed at 7:30pm again.

All in all ... it was a fabulous day!! And, we can hardly wait for tomorrow so we can get to know more about this exquisite place!!✨✨✨En savoir plus