Originally Posted by
Kacee
I would avoid Phuket in July. Seas will be very rough and you could see lots of rain.
The big advantage of Samui is the airport, which is fantastic (possibly the nicest in the world), and most of the resorts (excluding Conrad and IC) are within 15-30 minutes of the airport. If you go, book flights on PG aircraft which have the business class cabin, it's a very nice product for the short 50 minute flight. I've stayed at Vana Belle several times and am a fan.
In the same general area, there are several high end resorts on Koh Phangan, which has better beaches and is much less developed than Samui. They will offer door to door transfers from USM.
Thank you! We did end up booking Vana Belle after all. It seemed "cheap" but clearly I found a good rate as now prices are 50% higher for the same "summer offer" rate. Now that you mention it, Krabi did have somewhat rough sea two years ago even though there wasn't much rain.
Now about the flights - actually decided to go to the FS Chiang Mai to start off the trip, and there is a direct flight with PG CNX-USM, but it costs a bomb! They are only selling full fare Y - so hoping the price goes down closer to the date when they open up lower booking classes. Weirdly (or not) the opposite route is a third the price. No business class on that one, though.
Considering though whether to fly TG J up to CNX instead of PG Y - a little worried as we will fly straight there on arrival in BKK, and I've heard immigration is time consuming these days because they've started capturing biometrics. the USM-BKK flights with business on PG are either too early (12 noon) or too late (19h), sadly.