"Honeymoon Destination" a Ko Samui Travel Page by richyoon

There's so many considerations when planning a honeymoon. Amount of time you have, budget, and obviously location, location, location ... Based on these criteria, we found Koh Samui to be the perfect place for us.

Limited Time
Having started a new job within 6 months ago, I was fortunate enough just to get 2 weeks off. Since I was actually getting married in Korea, and having to use one-week for pre-wedding stuff (photography, last minute wedding details, meeting with friends/family, etc.), I was left with just an additional week for a honeymoon. Where could I go from Korea that I could do in one week? We didn't want to do too much traveling (i.e. why waste all your time on plane or trains) and we didn't want to go to a place where we needed to do a lot of sightseeing. We just wanted to relax for a week in a great location.

Location
Having been to Phuket in 2000, I knew how awesome and beautiful the islands of Southern Thailand can be, and we definitely wanted to have the tropical beach experience. Moreover, my new wife and I are very much into nightlife (i.e. bars, nightclubs, etc), which I knew was plentiful in Thailand. We considered Bali, Phuket, Cebu, and even places in China and Korea. But wanting to go to a place we've never been before, Koh Samui seemed to be the best choice (especially given that western side of Thailand (e.g. Phuket) in July is in monsoon season.

Budget
Getting married and starting a new life is very expensive, and I don't need to explain why budget was a big consideration. Although most places in Southeast Asia was very affordable back then, a big budget consideration was the airline tickets themselves. Fortunately, I was able to transfer miles to Korean Air which issued me one free ticket which covered both my flight from LA to Korea and Thailand (with the stop over in Korea considered part of my trip to Thailand). This clearly helped on the budget side. Moreover, I'm sure everyone knows how strong the U.S. dollar was in 2002, and how low the Baht was (something like 45 baht per dollar). Given all the cost that year, Koh Samui was probably one of the few places I could really have a five-star honeymoon with the budget of $2,000.