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Published: June 29th 2010
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Splendid Star Hotel Hanoi Well as you know its been a while since we made an entry. That's because we are in beach bum mode. After our final night in Hanoi, staying at the Splendid Star Hotel (www.splendidstarhotel.com) next to the large Catholic church, we caught a quick flight to Bangkok. The hotel, by the way is an excellent hotel and I would recommend it highly. You get a great breakfast provided and the room we had was massive with beautiful decor, Air con, large screen TV and computer with Internet in the room. Back to the landing in Bangkok. From here we had to catch a taxi to the train station to pick up the overnight train tickets we had booked online earlier in the adventure.This was thru the new booking service that Thai Railway offers via email. You can do it up to 60 days in advance by email and they only charge a 200 Baht booking fee. They had booked us exactly what we had asked for and we had 2 interconnecting first class sleepers. Once this was sorted we had a few hours up our sleeve so we decided to visit our old stomping ground and part time shopping ground, MBK
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First class sleeper cabin on train from Bangkok to Surat Thani in the Siam Square district. After some tasty KFC (hey, everynow and then you just get a hankering for western fast food) and browsing it was back to the train station. The train trip was excellent although we arrived 2 and a half hours later than expected. The cabin was comfortable and tidy and much better than the trains we used in Vietnam, just arriving on time was the issue. Because of the late arrival, this had put us back a fair bit in regards to getting to the island of Koh Samui in time to have a place of accommodation sorted and have some of the day left to enjoy.
As our train ticket was sorted by Thailand rail, we also used them as the ferry transfer as well which was a very bad idea. There bus service was actually the local bus which meant that it also picked people, packages and anything else it felt like. We had to catch the 12.00pm ferry and it was looking like that was not going to happen even though we got off the train at 8.45. But we just got there with about a minute to spare. Very stressful. This
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Maenam Resort was all for a ride that was supposedly about 50 minutes.
Once on the island we hit the ground running looking for accommodation and in the end we arrived at place number 6 on our list which was the Mae Nam Resort on the northern beach of the island. The resort costs us 1700 baht a night for a bungalow with AC and two beds for all of us. (Kids are top and tail) The beach is just 10 meters off our balcony and we are in heaven and THIS is the reason that I have not updated this blog in a while. 7 Days of bliss on the beach on the island of Samui and tomorrow we are off island hopping to Koh Pha Ngan for a fortnight.
The beach area in front of Maenam Resort is a really nice golden stretch that was really safe for the kids. Just laying in the shade of some palm trees, lots of swimming and reading. And of course eating. Loving the food as always. I think we definitely got it right with our planning in that we did the really active part of the trip first and now have 5
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Maenam Beach - Koh Samui weeks of beach bum mode.
Sorry I have not gone into too much detail but my credit on the Internet is about to run out. Take care all and see you next time.
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