Honeymoon: Day 9

Today wasn't the best of travel days. Last night, Andi started to complain that he didn't feel very well - and it only got worse through the night. Fever, body aches and throwing up. We'd already booked our ferry ticket out of Koh Tao for early this morning (which only departs 2x a day to Koh Samui) and had also booked a flight from Koh Samui to Bangkok immediately after. I assured Andi he'd feel better by morning, but unfortunately he didn't. We contemplated calling the ferry company and the airline to rebook, but thought it'd be too much trouble. So my poor husband traveled in the back of a pickup truck down a bumpy dirt road from our hotel, rode 2 hours on a ferry, took a hot and jerky taxi from the pier to the airport, endured the 1 hour flight from Koh Samui to Bangkok and finally a 45 minute cab ride to our hotel in Bangkok. I felt so bad for him - he just looked green all day.

As I've said before, Andi's usually our travel leader. I just follow along. But today I had to step it up and interpret our information to the taxi drivers, pay all our bills / tipping and carry 2 of our 3 backpacks. I was totally happy to do it, but wish he would have felt better. I'm not sure what he's sick with. It can't be food poisoning because we've eaten all the same things and I feel fine. I'm hoping it's the 24 hour flu ... although my theory is deflating because we're now on hour 28 and he's still sick in bed.

On an unrelated note, I snapped these photos of the Koh Samui Airport today. It was one of the coolest airports I've seen - all open air and designed like an outlet mall which I thought was pretty genius. I'd way rather shop here than in a regular airport store!

Airport "hallway"Our boarding gate
Since we flew first class, we also had access to Bangkok Airlines VIP suite with free drinks, snacks, air conditioning and computer/internet kiosks. This alone made Andi's trip a little better - at least he was able to lay in an air conditioned room for 45 minutes.

We're planning to stay in Bangkok until Wednesday before heading North to Chiang Mai for 2 days, then back to Bangkok to fly home. I hope we'll be able to stick to our plan. I'd really like the chance to visit Chiang Mai. Fortunately, we haven't booked anything yet so we can stay put as long as we need to until Andi's feeling better.

Today we checked into the Lebua State Tower Hotel in Bangkok. It's a huge hotel - one of the tallest buildings in downtown Bangkok. So far the service has been fantastic and our room is huge! It's more of an apartment actually - fully equipped with a kitchen / washer & dryer / sitting room / dining room / living room / master suite / 2 bathrooms / 2 balconies.

Kitchen viewLiving room / dining room
View of the city from our 57th floor room
There's also 4 restaurants and 4 bars right in our hotel! Check out this view of the Sky Bar on the 63rd floor of the hotel. It's one of the world's highest outdoor bars and overlooks Bangkok and the Chao Phraya River. While in Bangkok, we'd also like to go see the Lumphini Park Night Market, see a few city sites like the Wat Phra Chetuphon (King's Castle) and do a countryside tour. Andi found this one called Absolute Explorer - a bicycle tour on the outskirts of Bangkok where we'd ride to a traditional Thai market and tour a local school and temple in a native Thai village. We'll see how Andi's feeling tomorrow ...