Koh Samui, or Samui as I prefer to call it, was quite a destination. The island is pretty relaxed, and I will come up with a blog post about the place later.
Before I jump onto that post, let me tell you of what happened before the whole 9 days trip, which almost cost us the whole holiday.
BUMPED OUT OF THE FLIGHT TO SAMUI
It all started when our Bangkok Airways flight to Koh Samui was suddenly canceled five days before it was scheduled to happen. Trying to save a few Ringgit on flights, I opted to buy the flights through Expedia instead of from Malaysia Airlines official website.
Nervous, I made some calls to inquire, and it was reinstated within 48 hours without much explanation on why we were bumped out of the flight in the first place.
Regardless, I was relieved that Expedia attended to the issue fast, and helped ensure everything about the tickets went by smoothly.
ISSUES WITH TRAVELLING BANGKOK AIRWAYS
According to Expedia, as well as Bangkok Airways, we should be given all the boarding passes upon our check-in at the Kuching International Airport (KIA), which was also a norm when you board a Malaysia Airlines partner such as Bangkok Airways.
This time around, we were not issues boarding pass from Kuala Lumpur to Samui, and was asked to collect them at the transit counter in KLIA. This was weird considering the flight was also a code share flight with Malaysia Airlines, and there was actually less than two hours between our arrival in KLIA, and our connecting flight to Samui.
Problems started to arise when arriving at KLIA because somehow, it was the day I decided to leave my boarding pass, which contained our luggage tags at the pocket of my flight seat.
Usually, this wasn’t a huge deal if it was a direct flight and our luggage didn’t get lost, but this wasn’t the case that day.
Upon arriving at KLIA Transit Counter, we were asked to present our luggage tags for the boarding passes, and despite running all the way to the gate which we arrived at, the luggage tags had been disposed off, and I had to request for copies of it from the Malaysia Airlines officer. Lucky they did help re-print the tags.
Well, I thought that was the end of the issues, but apparently more came.
Apparently, the officers at the transit counter we were dealing with couldn’t issue us the proper boarding pass because she said only Bangkok Airways officer could do so. Well, the Bangkok Airways officer wasn’t at her desk, and after ringing up the person, she asked us to go out of the terminal, and re-enter after checking-in at the counter.
This was where I told her “Miss, our flight is less than an hour. We were told that we could get our boarding passes here, and there is a high chance we would miss our flight to Samui if we had to go out again“.
Lucky, the Malaysia Airlines officer reluctantly called up her Bangkok Airways colleague again, and confirmed that she could issue a temporary pass for us to get through immigration and then to the gate, and eventually collect our boarding passes at the gate, which was at the Main Satellite Building. Phew…
After we got our temporary boarding passes, we queued up at the transit immigration counter which took forever to move, before hurrying to the Main Satellite Building.
There was a sense of urgency really because the Main Satellite Building is connected by AeroTrain, and is quite far, needing us to board the AeroTrain.
Well, we arrived just in time at the gate after the check-in fiasco, and went into the Bangkok Airways plane on time.
The flight on Bangkok Airways was good and I enjoyed the food and good legroom.
One of the best flights of the trip I must say, despite the aircraft being smaller than Air Asia, Malindo and Malaysia Airlines.
MORE TROUBLE UPON ARRIVAL IN SAMUI
Landing and everything at Samui International Airport was uneventful, and I personally was hopeful that the lovely airport, probably one of the most ‘holiday and resort looking airport’ I’ve seen was a sign that things were going to go on smoothly.
Well, I was wrong because our bags didn’t turn up at the baggage carousel after half an hour.
It was only until a Bangkok Airways ground staff came to greet us and about ten others, did we realize our baggage was ‘lost’, or rather left in KLIA.
I don’t know how that happened, but it did, and for the first time in my life, I filled up a ‘missing baggage claim’ to have the luggage delivered to our hotel at 10PM that same night.
The baggage claim took half an hour or so, but the delay was long enough to make our pick-up ride leave back for the hotel, leaving us sort of stranded.
We picked up a local number and made a call to the hotel requesting for the van to return, and was told that the van would arrive in 15 minutes.
However, after an hour of waiting, the van didn’t turn up and we had to make another call. The hotel informed us that the van was already at the airport for almost an hour which made us baffled.
Apparently, Samui airport had two places for pick-up, and we were waiting at the premium one, and our ride was at the the ‘normal’ pick-up area.
After finally getting in our ride to the hotel, we were all just glad to be on our way to the hotel, and with our bags arriving late that night, the holiday which I could say is one of the most relaxing in my life, started to happened.
Well, I guess, all the problems had to end somewhere, and it ended that second we got our luggage at around 12 midnight.
I’ll fill you all in on the whole Samui experience in another post later.