So, it's been a week or so since last time, and lots has happened since then...
First just have to tell you about our trip from Chiang Mai . On the Thursday we decided to just fly to Bangkok and see what the best way was from there down to the islands. You can fly direct Chiang Mai -> Koh Samui, but there are only 4 flights a day and they were all full for the days we were willing to travel. So, Thursday we buy tickets Chiang Mai - Bangkok with Nokair, then on Friday we decide it's not worth hanging around Bangkok, or even heading into town to the train station, so we bought tickets from Bangkok - Koh Samui with Bangkok Airways (they're the only ones that fly to Samui).
Get up at the crack of dawn on Saturday wander out to the main road and pick up a Sawng Thiew (pickup taxi, it literally means Two Rows, cause that's how you sit, pretty standard down here). Out at the airport we breeze through everything (including an army checkpoint on the way in). We were due to fly out at 0750, and by 0720 there was no sign of our plane, so we were getting a little bit worried, having just 2 hours for turnaround at Bangkok, which is pretty big and we had to get our bags, go out, check in and go back through . Still, I digress. At 0725 our plane turned up at the gate, a heap of passengers got off, we got to board and we pushed back from the stand at... 0750... That's not bad - 25 minutes to unload passengers & their baggage and load us on with all our baggage! Full credit to Chiang Mai airport and Nok Air!!!
At Bangkok it went pretty smoothly, we even landed 5 minutes early and were checked in and had bought tickets for a boat transfer from Samui to Koh Tao (we'd planned on overnighting on Koh Samui, but as luck would have it, the last boat went at 1330 - an hour after we were scheduled to land at Samui, tickets went for 550 baht each, including transfer from the airport to the dock). So we were back through to airside within 30 minutes of landing. Then we discovered that all the great restaurants and things on airside were just in the international bit and the only restaurant available to us required you to buy a voucher for 500 or 1000 baht in advance of even looking at what food they had available!!! So we went back out into the real world again and ate at one of the great little places on the floor between arrivals & departures (up one level from arrivals, down one from departures), back through and we were at the gate in time for boarding. Cracking!
Landed a little late at Samui, and experienced our first taste of the changes that have happened since we were last here 5 years ago. It's heaps bigger. Lot's of building going on, loads of new places that weren't there last time. Hopefully Koh Tao isn't the same...
Anyway, made it to the boat with no problems and that was it. We'd made it from Chiang Mai to Koh Tao via Bangkok in one day, cheaper than a direct flight from Chiang Mai, and so not what we'd expected when we woke up this morning!