In order to make up for the massive back log, I guess I’m going to have to do some high level trip reviews, and then try to fill in with more color as I go forward. So, with that being said, I think I’ll work from biggest trips to smaller weekend adventures. Starting with Thailand.
For our second anniversary trip, we decided to head to Asia. We planned to go straight from family Christmas celebrations in Long Beach, California to Seoul, South Korea to visit Devin’s friends, and then on to Thailand. Translating this – we were going from East Coast winter, to moderate California weather, to EFFING FREEZING Seoul, to the hot humid summer weather of Thailand. So, this required a lot of packing.
The details:
We booked all sorts of things this trip. Korean Air, red-eye, to Seoul/Bangkok (on Christmas night). Aloft Hotel in Seoul. Conrad Koh Samui. Millennium Hilton in Bangkok. Singapore Air business class from Bangkok to JFK with a long layover in Singapore. American Airlines from JFK to DC (Devin wants to let you all know that this last flight sucked).
We did two full days in Seoul. Four days in Koh Samui. Three days in Bangkok. 8 hours in Singapore. Plus many many hours on planes (14 to Seoul, and about 24 to get back to the good old US of A).
The highlights:
The Conrad Koh Samui. OMG SO AMAZING TOTALLY WORTH THE TRIP INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL AND WE PAID NEARLY NOTHING FOR THIS GORGEOUS ROOM. Yeah. We really loved this hotel. Our beautiful personal infinity pool. The luxurious and spacious room with the gorgeous bath tub that looked out over the Gulf of Thailand. The primo service. The secluded environment (which some people find a downside, but I thought was a huge plus). Honestly, this hotel was top notch, and really rivaled our hotel in the Maldives. Oh, and the Gold member breakfast? It. Was. Awesome.
The Raccoon Café and the Traditional Tea House, Seoul. I wish I had been a little more brave in interacting with the raccoons. But they’re seriously cute critters. Plus one of them tried to bite some dumb girl who repeatedly tried to selfie with it. Good on you, Rocky Raccoon. Good on you. And I love the café and tea house culture of Seoul, in general.
The Executive Lounge at the Millennium Bangkok. I recalled this lounge being primo from my prior trip, and it continues to be so. Amazing views of the river and the city, tons of delicious food and alcoholic beverages (cocktails, wine, and beer). Breakfast was a sumptuous spread plus made to order eggs and omelets. They even offered afternoon tea and snacks. They definitely treat loyal Hilton Honors members right.
So. Much. Delicious. Food. Yes, there were some misses (that weird lunch restaurant on our first day in Korea that never provided us with a menu and served some type of unknown fish soup – eh). But overall there was just a ton of delicious food on this trip. Amazing Korean BBQ. Hot bibimbap on a bitterly cold night. Thai BBQ on our patio on our anniversary. Modern Thai at Jahn. Amazing pad thai in a sketchy little hole in the wall. A gorgeous outdoor dinner in the courtyard at MahaNaga, which reminded me so much of New Orleans. The absurdly expensive rooftop dinner at Sirocco & Sky Bar (the dinner was very good, but at a minimum this is a must visit drink location). An overwhelming amount of traditional food on our dinner cruise down the Chao Phraya. Delicious food was everywhere, and we took full advantage of it.
Wifi Everywhere! At the airport in Seoul we rented a mobile wifi unit for super cheap. This was also available in Thailand, although we didn’t feel the need to do it because there was excellent quality wifi pretty much everywhere we went. Even one of the temples (Wat Benchamabophit) had free wifi for tourists! Honestly, this is one of the things that amazes me when I think about it. On my first international trip in 2005, we didn’t have cell phones with us because international calling plans were crazy expensive. We had no internet anywhere we stayed, and we had to go use internet cafes at a steep 2 euros per 15 minutes on non-English keyboards to stay in touch with everyone at home. I cannot believe how far the world has come, and how easy it is to stay plugged in. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing, I’m not sure. But it really is amazing!
The not-so-high-lights:
Seoul in the bitter cold. We went to one of the palaces, and it was just too damn cold to make it enjoyable. You know when you don’t want to walk in the King’s Secret Garden? When it’s 14 degrees plus a serious windchill, and there’s nothing at all that’s really alive in the garden (except for a fat cat laying in the winter sun!) because oh hey it’s the dead of winter. I’m sure the garden is ridiculously lovely in the spring and summer, though.
The longest airport line I have ever been in. The line to check in for Korean Air in Seoul was INSANELY long. And we actually arrived early (at least for us). The check-in line wound through about ten very long snaking dividers. Then all the way down the entire bank of check in locations. Then around the corner. Then part way down the other side of check in banks. I was in the line for nearly two full hours. We hadn’t even made it to the front (we were about four families away) when they did last call for check-in for our flight, and we had to leave the line, go to another check-in bank, and get in the last minute queue. They didn’t even give us priority security, though! Seoul has three security options: priority, pre-check (or something like that), and regular. Luckily they allowed us into the pre-check line, because the regular line was crazy long and we only had about 25 minutes to get through security and to our gate. Which, of course, we got there and they delayed our flight! All’s well that ends well, I guess?
Snorkeling in Koh Samui. Meh. First off, I apparently put the spout of my awesome new snorkel mask (thanks, Grandparents!) on backward. Which caused me to occasionally be completely shut off from oxygen so that I was desperately gasping for air and thrashing about. Lesson learned very quickly! But the snorkeling was, overall, a rather meh experience. Definitely not as nice as the Maldives, or Hawaii. The water on our first day was extremely rough, and so there was lots of debris reducing visibility to nearly nothing. Combined with my near suffocation, this wasn’t the best experience. On our second day of snorkeling, we want to Ang Thong National Marine Park. And the snorkeling there was better, but there didn’t seem to be the diversity of aquatic life we had seen in other places. So, that was rather disappointing. But the trip to Ang Thong was, otherwise, very fun.
Touristing in Bangkok. Sigh. I could have done this so much better. I really didn’t plan thoroughly enough, and so we wasted a ton of time including getting taken for a bit of a tuktuk scam ride which killed an afternoon. There was a positive to that, which is that Devin got some beautifully tailored attire, including an awesome suit, for super cheap. But it still wasn’t worth the afternoon ride when we were on a short time frame. And the next day we had numerous cab failures, as well as a closed historic location that I had really wanted to visit (their website did NOT say they were closed!). We did see many of the highlights, including the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and many other temples. But there was a ton of wasted time in the hot, polluted city that we could have avoided. Next time I’ll plan better.
Weather Delays and a Burst Pipe. Soooo there was a polar vortex and we missed it! But it totally effed up the flights into the East Coast, and caused a long delay before takeoff in Frankfurt. Then an even longer delay once we landed at JFK. However, 1.5 hours of delay before finding a gate was actually a HUGE improvement! The day before we came in the delays were 5+ hours on the tarmac! Once off the plane, we got through immigration very quickly, then had another 45 minutes or so waiting for our bags. But lucky us, we left the international terminal just as a major water pipe burst and shut down the terminal. Woo! Victory was ours!
Shout-Outs:
Dimas Frolov. Our wonderful photographer on Koh Samui. He drove us around, took us to a beautiful lunch location on a mountain top, and, most importantly, took GORGEOUS anniversary photos of us! Check him out if you’re ever on the island. https://dimasfrolov.com/