escaping winter - july edition

OK, my trip this time isn't much of a holiday.

I'm attending my cousin's wedding in Ko Samui and got to spend a few days in Singapore on the way back to Melbourne.

The kicker? I get to make people at work jealous and as a bonus, escaping the gloomy winter weather of Melbourne and bathing myself with some warm (maybe a bit hot) tropical weather. Sun!

There were no major dramas this time. Finally!

The only thing was this time, my taxi on the way to the airport had a data jammer. Isn’t that cool? Actually I don’t know if that’s true or not but the moment I got into the taxi, my 3G went off and even until five minutes later when I restarted my phone it still had a hard time finding 3G. I got the last laugh though.

I was so tired that night of my flight. I caught a cold and on the way to the airport I must have slept almost all the way. That was also the case on the plane. After I got on, doors were closed (seat next to me was empty, yeah!), plane took off and when PEDs (portable electronic devices) were allowed back on I zoned out blaring out music from my iPhone through the Sennheiser earbuds and I was out cold. I even skipped the first meal, or rather didn’t know they were serving it and didn’t wake up until the second serving of the meal which was around two hours before touching down in Singapore.

Met mom in Changi airport and boarded the flight to Ko Samui.

Samui International Airport was pretty laid back. In my mind it was like huts connected together to form a structure. Customs was almost non-existent. You’d think Australia is a pretty laid back country and the custom officers would reflect that. Wrong! But the custom officers in Ko Samui were more than laid back. They just…didn’t care? One of them took my passport, didn’t even check if I looked like the guy in the passport photo, didn’t even ask me to look at the camera, just kept on doing his business until he stamped my passport and without even looking back to me, gave me my passport and I was in.

Five steps later I was already in the baggage area then off to the hotel.

The hotel was amazing. Must be the best resort I’ve ever been into even though I’ve only been into a couple (I’m not the type of person who likes doing nothing the whole day during holidays). Price-wise I think it’s about $450 per night (private villa with outdoor bed and swimming pool) which was OK compared to the villa I visited in Bali ($3600 per night). For me the room looks something like it came out of an IKEA showroom with all the light coloured wood décor but still very nice.

Cons: I had to call a buggy whenever I want to go to the lobby and actually do stuff since the lobby was a long hike from the villa.

Most of my time here was spent in the private outdoor pool with Wi-Fi on my phone and just update whatever on the phone. Yes the Wi-Fi coverage actually reaches the pool area which was a good thing.

And on the fourth day it was byebye fake paradise and hello Singapore.

Checked in at Marina Bay Sands at 2PM, they said my room wasn’t ready yet since the allocated check-in time was 3PM. Not a problem, I had to be somewhere anyway. By the time I returned to the hotel at 6PM, they said my room wasn’t ready as of yet. OK, how long does it take to prepare a room for a new guest? Especially when I finally got in, at 9.30PM mind you, and saw that the room was pretty standard.

Mom was furious at the customer service. They said they’d allow us late checkout which was at 1PM on the day of our flight. Whatever, but for a hotel of that caliber that was uncool and it made it to my unsatisfactory service list. No hard feelings.

It was mostly catching up with friends, and food. I did visit the Gardens by the Bay and even though in my mind this looked like the place where aliens would nest if they were to start invading the earth, it was still really amazing. I want to go back again since it was raining half-way I was there so I didn’t get to see the whole thing. Curse you weather.

Oh actually on the way to the Gardens by the Bay I was supposed to catch an elevator but I couldn’t find it and so I took the stairs. It was over a hundred steps so it was a bit like London all over again. Bummer.

And last but not least, the excess baggage.

Mine was 15kg, mom’s makeup artist had 30kg of baggage and the winner was mom with almost 50kg of luggage just for herself. So the three of us had almost, literally, a ton of baggage with us. Mom had to pay 23kg of excess baggage because she was flying home by herself.

Now I’m back in Melbourne but I’ll be flying out again in three week time. Jakarta and South Korea, wait for me.

Pics as usual are up on Flickr.