pjs

Maybe because the lounge was before security (which took all of 30 seconds anyway), but the gate area was full. I don't think the average tourist knows about the lounges.

Thanks - I'm enjoying reliving the trip through the report.

Thanks - we tried to fit a lot in everywhere as we're not sure when we'll get back that way. Of all the places we went, Vietnam is the main one we want to go back to as there's much more for us to see in Central and Southern Vietnam.

jmj9905

pjs a question about the Bangkok airways lounged. We have two flights coming up in Oct. One is bkk/chiang rai and siem reap/bkk in coach as they don't offer business on those routes. If I understood your post all passengers are allowed to use Bangkok Airways lounges?

pjs

RumPatrol

That's the right way to do it, especially in East/SE Asia with so many different cultures in a relatively small geographic space. I know a lot of people prefer to stay in one place longer and to not feel rushed, but I'd rather get a taste of a bunch of different cultures, even if it means missing a few things here and there. It also helps you decide where you want to go back when/if you get the chance. I have done that quite a bit and if you can stomach a little extra time in transit and can handle the occasional unplanned adventure, it's a blast.

Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand were great choices. Hong Kong is probably my favorite city in the world and any time I am in the area, I try to stop in HK for a few days. Same for Singapore, at least when I find myself very hungry. My next Asia trip has to include an actual stop in Vietnam though.

jmj9905

pjs thanks for the information. It's a big help.

pjs

7/28 – A Bumpy Arrival

PG244 USM-CNX
8:20-10:05

We settled into our exit row seats. This flight was full as there are only a couple of nonstops per day and only on Bangkok Airways. We were again served a full meal on this 90 minute flight along with coffee/tea service. Sorry, forgot to get a picture of the meal.



The only annoyance was a teenager that kept kneeing my wife’s seat off and on throughout the flight. Darn tourists.

Everything is basically outdoors at Koh Samui airport, even baggage claim.



After a quick call and a little confusion, we found our driver at the arrivals area.

It took about 45-50 minutes to get to the Conrad. The check-in area has some great views.







We had some minor issues regarding our room at check-in that turned into a major annoyance and clouded our view of the way this property is run. When we first arrived around 11:30 am, we were welcomed as a Diamond member, told our room would be ready in about 1/2 hour and given our choice of toiletries for the room. Then we were taken by buggy to the main restaurant and they bought us a soft drink of our choice (it was another Thai Buddhist holiday so no alcohol served that day). So far so good.



Then our assigned customer service rep came and took us to the room (220), an upgraded room (has the Bose speaker system and board games in the room). Ok, I had previously requested something closer to the breakfast restaurant, but given our arrival time, I understand the need to place us in something available at the time.







We also had a nice fresh fruit bowl.



When we got to the room, the rep was showing us how the audio/video system worked and we noticed some issues (radio wouldn't play, video on demand wouldn't load). Normally, we don't even turn on the TV on vacation (except the odd CNN or BBC news check), but we knew we would be spending more time in the room here so we wanted everything working. She contacted IT, who came out to fix it.

At this point, we were hungry so we ordered room service. After IT left and supposedly fixed the system, it still wasn't working (and our luggage had still not been delivered from the arrival area after 45 minutes). We ate our lunch while we watched the IT guy try again to fix it (how romantic). It still didn't work. By now, my wife was steaming mad (as we had been up since 3am due to the issue with our house back home). She asked me to call the front desk and see if we could get our room switched. So, I did and was told our CSR would be by in 10 minutes and we were moving to room 303.

OK, so we finished up our lunch and waited. And waited. After 30 minutes, I spoke directly to the manager on duty (the GM was off as it was the weekend) and she apologized. Our CSR showed up a few minutes later and took us instead to room 314, which we found upon entry had a rollaway bed made up in the room (...). At this point, my wife lost it and told her to take us back to the arrival area immediately and make sure our luggage was there too.

When we got to reception (and keep in mind it takes 5-10 minutes on a golf cart for all of these trips), we spoke to the manager and told her we wanted a working room ASAP. She showed me what was available and I picked a room closest to the pool/beach area as my wife wanted to look for shells while we were there, so we would save time in the golf carts back and forth. She personally took us to room 110 (not upgraded but they are all basically the same) and made sure everything was working. She also offered to comp lunch and dinner that day. In the end, she comped lunch and dinner plus dinner the next day at Jahn, their nice restaurant. This whole process took about 3 hours before we were finally able to settle into our room.

We probably had a more critical eye toward the staff after this mess and noticed that some were not as friendly or accommodating as you would expect in a supposed 5 star resort. Overall, we had a pretty good stay despite the rough start. Given that I only spent $30 there with all the comped meals, we will now have to find another Hilton resort to use up the Aspire resort credit.

Anyway, going back to trip report, we tried to relax for the rest of the afternoon and evening. We enjoyed the private pool and walked down to the small beach for some shelling, which improved the wife’s mood quite a bit. We also had a beautiful sunset.



Since we couldn’t get a drink at the restaurants and we were tired, we decided to have dinner in our room. It was again delivered promptly and hot, supplemented by beer from the minibar.

We were somehow able to get Netflix to work through the internet browser on the TV so we watched a bunch of episodes of Orange Is The New Black before we went to bed. We had a full day tour planned for the next day, our last full day on the trip.

7/29 – Snorkels, Speedboats and Sun

As we had gone to sleep early, we woke up at 6 and watched another episode of OITNB

Around 7, we called for a buggy to be taken to breakfast. We waited about 15 minutes for the ride. We brought our things for the day with us so we wouldn’t have to go back to the room again before leaving the resort.

Breakfast was very good, although it took until the second day until I found all the stations as some of them were outside the restaurant.

Our taxi ordered by the tour company, 100 Degrees East, came and picked us up at the appointed time of 8:15am. It took us about 40 minutes to get to their office, near the Big Buddha (and not far from the airport).

After a quick safety briefing, we met the rest of our group. We had a couple from Australia, a family from the Netherlands, and a few folks enjoying a day off from a yoga certification course.

We walked just outside and down to the beach where our boat waited for us. We had a great day out, starting with a 60 minute speedy ride to Angthong National Park for snorkeling, including in some caves. Then, we rode over to an island beach, where we had a nice lunch, followed by some free time on the beach. After that, we kayaked (and even the Mrs. did it this time). Finally, we went to see Emerald Lake and got some panoramic views from the viewing tower.









I highly recommend this tour and this tour company. It's on the expensive side, but you're not on a boat with 80 people and bumping into others while snorkeling. It was well worth it. We got back to the office around 4:30pm and after we paid the remaining balance (used up my last Baht), we were driven back to the Conrad.
We walked down to the beach and tried to go to happy hour, but we apparently just missed it.

We had a reservation at Jahn, the fine dining restaurant at the Conrad. I got the tasting menu and my wife ordered an appetizer and entrée (and shared some of my tasting menu dishes). Unlike a lot of restaurants, they do not require everyone in the party order the tasting menu. To be honest, you probably only need to supplement the tasting menu with one additional entrée as it’s a lot of food.









The never-ending anniversary LOL



The food and service was good and we retired to our room (after yet another buggy ride).

7/30 – Farewell Conrad, We (Probably) Won’t Be Back

We slept in till the late hour of 6:30am. Breakfast was at 7 so we got a buggy to take us up there. After breakfast, we just relaxed at the beach and in our pool for the rest of the morning, starting to gather our things and pack for the long journey home. We had lunch at the pool restaurant, Azure, and other than some loud kids in the pool, we had a nice meal.

We checked out at 2pm and I realized that they had only charged me for the final lunch (around $30) so in the end, we were happy with the resolution, but would have preferred to have no issues in the first place.

Our driver from Samui Explorer was on time and we headed to the airport.

Up Next: The Loooong Journey Home

jmj9905

Great Tr. Keep it coming.

AKDan

offerendum

Very nice.... I think about Koh Samui for a while. As snorkeling is one of my passions: How was the world underwater? Did you see many colorful fish? Is there a nice variety of corals?

pjs

Thanks - will finish up this week.

Thanks - We've found some of our favorite foods from our Hanoi food tour here at a local Vietnamese restaurant.

It was a little cloudy in the water this time of year. Our guide said February-March was a better time for clear water. There were a lot of fish varieties and coral. It was very shallow where we snorkeled so that made it easier to see everything. Have to watch out for sea urchins though.

amandarub

Great photos of Koh Samui! I really need to go someday

pjs

7/30 (continued) – Istanbul, not Constantinople

When we got to the Koh Samui Airport, we checked in with Thai in the business class line. We just had to wait for one other group to check their bags. We checked our bags all the way through to Atlanta and we were also given lounge passes to the business lounge (not to be confused with the regular Bangkok Airways lounge that all passengers can use). Unfortunately, Thai could not give us our Turkish boarding passes for our connecting flights for some reason.

We walked through the airport to the domestic gates and then through a quick security check. It's a cool airport. This is the shopping area.



We found the Blue Ribbon Lounge fairly easily. It was nice and air-conditioned, unlike the rest of the airport, which is mostly open-air.





We had eaten lunch at the Conrad a couple of hours before so we picked at the buffet. There was also an a la carte menu. The only alcohol available was beer, but they also had Thai iced tea, etc. as well. The mens room had an aquarium in it for some reason.



We had a relaxing hour in the lounge and then boarded our Thai flight to Bangkok.

TG288 USM-BKK (Business)

This was one of 2 737-400s that Thai keeps around for this route. According to their inflight magazine, these are the only narrow body aircraft in their fleet. The rest of them must have been sent over to Thai Smile, their LCC/domestic subsidiary.





(Note: since our trip, I have read that these aircraft have been retired. I suppose they are now just code sharing with Bangkok Airways on this route as a wide body could not land at USM).

We were in seats 14a and b, which was strange as these were in the fourth row of business. Not quite sure who came up with this row-numbering convention. Another feature of USM is the back-taxi up the runway to get to our takeoff point. We had some nice views of Koh Samui and Koh Phangan on takeoff.





Shortly after takeoff, we were served a meal. It might have been my favorite meal in the air of this whole trip. It was Pad Thai wrapped in a thin omelet. There was also a delicious marshmallow cream dessert.





It was rainy in Bangkok on arrival. I’m not sure why, but we must have flown 20 miles past the airport and then turned back to land. That was followed by a tour around the whole airport to get to our gate in the B concourse We had a long layover anyway, so I wasn’t concerned that we arrived at our gate a little late around 18:45.

Now we got a little confused as we were transferring from domestic to international, but we did not have our boarding passes for Turkish. After asking someone, we were told just to simply exit, go back up to the departures area and check-in with Turkish. We did that, and were given fast track security passes along with a lounge pass to the Thai lounge (we knew better than to go there).

Security and immigration were very quick. Our flight was departing from E10, and ordinarily, we would have tried the Oman Air lounge in that concourse, but as we were traveling Star Alliance biz, we could try the Eva Air Lounge in F, which gets consistently good reviews on here.

The décor is garish in there, but once you get past the Vegas glitz, it’s actually a very nice and relaxing lounge with a decent food and drink spread. There’s even massage chairs and Japanese toilets!







We passed a pleasant couple of hours in the lounge and headed down to E10 for our flight.

TK69 BKK-IST A330-300

We boarded pretty early, at 22:05 (the scheduled pushback was 23:00). We had 23/28 business class seats filled. I had selected the middle seats in row 2 so we wouldn’t have to climb over each other.

The cabin was very spacious and there was a quite a distance between the rows. We pushed back a couple of minutes early. During taxi, the onboard chef (aka flight attendant in a funny hat) came around to take dinner and breakfast orders.







After we leveled out, because it was a late flight, the FAs came around and did the turn down service first. This basically consisted of them putting the mattress pad on the seat and handing out the blanket and pillow. I decided not to change into my Lufthansa pajamas this time as we did not have individual air vents, so shorts and t-shirt were the best option. We were also given a voucher for free Wi-Fi, which is a nice touch (and a missed opportunity for revenue for TK).

Dinner was finally served about 90 minutes after takeoff and it wasn’t great. We didn’t get the full TK hors d'oeuvres treatment. It was a quicker service. The chicken was very dry.









Amuse Bouche (not very amusing):



Shrimp Appetizer:



Chicken:



Dessert (hard ice cream):



I watched Kingsmen 2 during dinner and then decided to try and get some sleep. I woke up 5 hours later. That has to be a record for me on any longhaul flight. The seat/bed was extremely comfortable and the cabin was kept at a nice temperature.

7/31 – The Looong Layover and Finally Home

Right after I woke up, we were about two hours out from IST. Breakfast was served, based on our pre-flight selections.





For the rest of the flight, I watched live tv, used the internet and checked the cameras as we approached IST. It was dark, but the lights of the city and the boats on the Bosphorus were clearly visible.

We landed early at 4:24am local time. We had a long taxi to our gate and had to wait for other traffic to pass. We found transfer security pretty easily and went through into the departure terminal. We had about a 9 hour layover. We had been to Istanbul before, and we had a few options for our layover. We had considered taking the free tour, but it was only 2.5 hours, and that didn’t seem worth the cost of the visas to get landside. We could have gone into town on our own, but what’s open at 5am anyway and then we’d have to be back by noon for our 2pm departure. We could have got a free hotel, but that would again require visas. In the end, we decided to pass the time in the TK lounge.

The lounge was a fairly long walk from security, but easy to find. The wife asked for us to find a couch so she could nap. That was easier said than done. I scoured the lounge for about 10 minutes before I hit paydirt and we found our camping spot on the main level.

We basically sat in that spot, browsed the internet (when it worked), grazed on the various food offerings, dozed, and stretched our legs for the next 7 hours. I also got on the list for a shower and after about 2 hours, my beeper went off. The shower rooms were fairly nice, but the lounge as a whole isn’t being well maintained given that the new airport is opening very soon. You can find a ton of reviews online of the lounge itself so I won't get into details here.



Around 12:15, we left the lounge and walked over to the gate. I had the dreaded SSSS on my boarding pass (first time for me), so we wanted to leave plenty of time. Well, we left way too much time, as there was a business class security line at the gate so it did not take long to get through. It seemed like everyone got the extra security check, not just SSSS people. Like many airports, once you are through gate security for a US-bound flight, you are stuck at the gate. By the looks of the 735 children under 2 that were on this flight, I was glad not to be in economy.

TK31 IST-ATL A330-200

I was fairly sure we would be on a recently refurbished A332 and I was correct. This aircraft used to have angle-flat seats, but this one had lay-flats, nice new IFE screens and controllers and, and…individual air vents!







We were on a retro livery aircraft too, which was cool. We also received slightly different amenity kits (sorry no pics of that). This flight would feature the full TK meal treatment with the hors d'oeuvres cart and everything.





We pushed back a few minutes late and our wheels were up at 14:32. I stuck with the same Sauvignon Blanc from the earlier flight as it wasn’t bad. The food was much better on this flight. The fish was slightly dry but everything else was very good.



Amuse Bouche:



Appetizers:



Fish Entree:



Desserts:



I watched the recent Jumanji remake during dinner, which was just OK, then I took a nice 4 hour nap. The seats felt a bit narrower to me, but maybe it was just that I was next to a window this time.

The pre-arrival meal was quite tasty. Sorry didn't get a pic of the entree for some reason.



Then I watched a few episodes of the Crown as we neared Atlanta. We landed on time, despite some bad weather, but we waited quite a while for a gate.

For the first time ever, there was a wait to use Mobile Passport. Maybe it’s time to finally get Global Entry. We took an Uber home and the trip was over.

That concludes our first trip to Asia. We had a fantastic time and we were very lucky with our flights being mostly on time and very pleasant. Our favorite hotel was probably the Le Meridien Chiang Mai because of the issues at the Conrad Koh Samui. Our favorite place was probably a tie between Chiang Mai and Hanoi. Hope you enjoyed it. Next year, we have a family Spring Break trip to Maui (first time to Hawaii) and just the wife and I are headed to Croatia (and neighboring countries) in June.

andersonCooper

Just got back from another set of LH CX flights and could definitely understand where you are coming from. I believe even with the "cut-down" new JCL on ORD-HKG route, the food is still better than US3 offerings. I hope you have the same experience in coming days. But to OP's point, we are gonna choose whatever works best for our schedule and wallet.

Also, a kind reminder to OP - Asia Miles have hard expiration policy, which means even with eligible account activities, AM will expire in a set period of time. Please don't forget to use them before they expire!

pjs

Yup - I see the expiration date every time I log in. Just have to plan another trip to use them. Not sure about the sweet spots since the devaluation. I did get AsiaMiles for CNX-BKK Bangkok Airways flight though.

ExpatSomchai

Just back from a trip to Thailand, my second home, and was nice to read your report. Thanks for sharing with us.