Countdown to Thailand

To celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary, we’re returning to the site of our honeymoon—to Thailand! Ten years later, two kids in tow, it’s going to be a very different trip, but we’re excited.

It took us a while to pin down our itinerary—how much to change and how much to keep the same?

Our honeymoon took us to Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Ko Samui—an island in the Gulf of Thailand. This time we’ll be skipping the north, having been warned that it’s the season when many rice fields are burned and the air quality could be uncomfortable. We’ll also head to the other coast—the Andaman Sea—from where we will depart from Phuket. That was a tough call, as I remember thinking at the time that one day we’d return to Ko Samui with our kids and introduce her to the “fruit lady” we’d met there.

Here’s the final plan: Fly to Bangkok and spend a few days there before flying south. From Surat Thani we’ll catch a ride to the Khao Sok National Park. There’s a reputable elephant sanctuary there (no riding allowed) and we’re spending two nights in a tent cabin on the premises before driving/ferrying to Ko Yao Noi, an island near Phuket in the Ko Yao Archipelago, an island group in Phang Nga Bay. Water conditions permitting, we’ll do at least one day trip around the bay—but I’ve heard that the crowds of day trippers have grown thick, making good snorkeling and serene beach scenes hard to come by. We will also have a 3-year-old along, so we’ll have to see what’s seems safe and reasonable on the water. Finally, we’ll spend our last two nights on Phuket at a resort with a good kids’ club to reward ours for those stick days of sightseeing they (happily? peacefully?) endured in Bangkok and guarantee we at least get one hour for a couples massage on this visit, too.

We have all of our accommodations and transfers booked, but I’m still plotting the details.

Have you been? Any suggestions? 

The countdown is on… T-minus 3-1/2 weeks and 18 or 19 hours in the air.

P.S. I ordered this book for the kids, but would also welcome any suggestions for them. Below, a few more photos from our honeymoon.

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