Elements Boutique Resort and Spa Hideaway

So yesterday we checked out of the hostel after having one more delicious breakfast there. After this, all we needed to do was kill time until we needed to leave for the airport. Our flight wasn't until 6am today, but rather than pay for another nights accommodation and have to leave and rush in the early hours of the morning, we thought it wouldn't be too bad to spend the night in the airport.

To kill time, we walked up and down Khao San Road and Rambuttri Alley until we were sick of being asked to buy a suit, and ran out of witty replies/excuses. We met up with Gemma, our Aussie friend who we met at WFFT. We had lunch with her and caught up with all the gossip, and she showed us how to use BTS, the sky train, which is a cheaper alternative to getting a taxi to the airport.

After saying our goodbyes, we hopped on the sky train to the airport, costing us 45 baht each (less than £1). We had to stand for the whole journey, and it was very crowded but as it's high over the city, the views are enough to keep you occupied, and it took less than half an hour. As we looked down to the highway and saw the bumper-to-bumper traffic we were thankful for Gemma introducing us to the BTS! 

We arrived at the airport at 6pm, just twelve hours to kill before our flight. We had already checked in online, so we only needed to put our luggage through, but this wasn't until 4am, so we made ourselves comfortable in the seating area, playing endless games of cards and alphabet games until we were hungry enough to get some dinner. The food court in the airport is somewhat unimpressive before you go through security. Like airports everywhere, everything was overpriced and crowded. We stumbled upon a small stall selling Thai meals for 80 baht, so we sat down and had sticky rice and pork, proud that we had managed to avoid Starbucks and the overpriced Japanese sushi restaurant.

Ten minutes later though, Luke was hungry again, so we ended up in Burger King! I didn't eat there, but Luke demolished a double fish burger meal. At this point, it was around 10pm and we were starting to get tired. We walked back to the seating area and played more cards, more alphabet games, and killed more hours. 

At 4am, we almost cried with happiness as we put our bags through and walked through security. 

On the way to the gate, we saw signs for Subway and McDonalds, but everything was closed until 6am, so no breakfast for us! We boarded the plane at 5.30am, a small Bangkok Airways plane with friendly Thai staff, and both fell asleep before takeoff. Luke had just enough time to take a picture of the beautiful sunrise before we both passed out.

We awoke to find a Thai air hostess thrusting trays off food at us, 'free meal', which we weren't going to reject. It turned out to be an unimpressive noodle and saucy salad combo, but we were hungry so we ate most of it and fell back to sleep.

We landed at 7am, in the middle of a thunderstorm. The airport is tiny and the rain was so heavy, it definitely woke us up! We were met by a Thai driver holding up a sign for Elements Boutique Resort and Spa Hideaway, and we climbed in the huge car for the 45 minute drive to the resort. Neither of us could keep our eyes open and slept for the whole car journey, despite trying so hard to keep them open as I really wanted to see what Samui looked like! On arrival, we were met by William, a friendly member of staff who told us the basics of the facilities and restaurants and showed us to our room. 

It's beautiful, but all we wanted to do was climb into the huge comfy bed and go straight to sleep! That was this morning, it's now 6.20pm and I've since got up and showered. Luke is still sleeping (and snoring) heavily.

The minibar and room service meals are very expensive, and we suspect the hotel restaurants will be too, we didn't expect the resort to be quite so secluded! We need to eat though, so I'm going to wake Luke up now and see if we can decide where to have dinner.

Hopefully tomorrow we will actually see daylight and sunshine, and take more pictures of Koh Samui.