Five Nights in Koh Samui
By Lauren Gerzina & Justin Hayes
Sunrises, R&R, and Jet Skis
We actually don’t have a lot to write about our five-night stay in Koh Samui because we honestly didn’t do a lot. We ended up calling it a vacation from our vacation, and boy did we need it.
Using Lauren’s points from work travel, we stayed at a 5-Star resort from Marriott’s Luxury Collection called Vana Belle. It wasn’t all-inclusive, but you could easily never leave the resort if you didn’t want to. It was a beautiful place with amazing customer service. We had a private pool in our suite that overlooked the water (we got upgraded to an Ocean View room). We also had a personal assistant named Song who we could text for anything we wanted and always responded immediately.
We decided to take it easy during this portion of our trip since Krabi was go-go-go and since the last few stops in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Seoul were going to be very quick and busy. But we did do some stuff, so here are a few highlights:
Our flight from Krabi to Koh Samui was on a propeller plane, which was pretty cool.
The Koh Samui airport is super-small and open-air. It reminded us of airports in Hawaii.
The night we arrived at the hotel, they were having a manager’s cocktail hour and meet & greet with free drinks and appetizers.
Breakfast was included as a bonus part of Lauren’s status, and it had plenty of options, including Gluten Free bread!
We ate several times at the two restaurants in the hotel. Panali and the Pool Bar had Thai and American food, which we usually ordered for lunch or room service, but we did have dinner there once.
We also ate at the nicer restaurant called Kiree for dinner. The food was very good and they were always accommodating with Justin’s allergies. They even had Gluten-Free beer!
We had one dinner outside of the hotel at an Italian restaurant called Prego. They had some of the best GF pizza and regular pizza we have tried (outside of Italy for Lauren). On the day we did laundry in town, we also had lunch at a place that had Poke and delicious salads.
The hotel had a few activities that we did, including a Thai wine-tasting class and a cocktail-making class. The Thai wine was called Monsoon Valley, and it was actually really good.
We also did a Jet Ski excursion where we rented a Jet Ski for 90 minutes. Lauren drove for about 30 minutes and Justin drove it for about an hour (Lauren was pretty much done after about 45 minutes and chilled on the beach while Justin was having the time of his life).
The last night, Song drew us a bath and gave Justin some complimentary GF beer in the room.
I don’t think either of us wanted to leave, until Justin reminded Lauren that our next stop was Hong Kong Disneyland . . .
