We had a fantastic holiday. It rained on the first day (we got the tail end of the storm from up north – Bangkok area) but for the rest of our holiday the weather was perfect. Apparently, the week before it was raining non-stop, so we were lucky. On the first day when it was raining so hard we spent most of it shopping at a big shopping mall. I got a bit of Christmas shopping done, stuff are a lot cheaper than here in Australia but then again anywhere else is cheaper than here.

We did a lot of swimming, the pool in the our resort is salt water instead of chlorine, which I found so much better. We decided not to go swimming in the ocean though, because of terrible weather it was not very clear and it was very rough. We just walked on the beach and bought some fruits in the near by street vendors. DH got addicted to banana pancakes and coconut juice, they were everywhere and so cheap.

We ended up spending ~$1,400 (although I still need to confirm this when our Amex bill comes, there might be a slight difference due to exchange rate). Around $325 however are christmas/gift spending. So in the end we spend just a bit over $78, $1000 was our budget for spending. Coincidently, we spent $77.21 on duty-free alcohol in Singapore airport, this was a last minute decision to get some. For it we got 2 – 1 litre bottles of Baileys and 1 litre bottle of Chivas Regal, this would have cost over $100 here.

Overall this is what we spent = $3,456.88:

Accommodation - $199.00
Airfares - $1,735.82
Shots - $260.00
Airport Transfers - $75.00
Travel Insurance - $108.63
Holiday Expenses - $1,078.43

Was hoping to only spend $3,000 but because of the shots and insurance it didn't leave us much for spending. Still $1,000 on spending is still very good.

The $325 on top of this expenses was mainly spent on DH suit, that was for $170, it would have cost here for at least $250+. The material feels really good and it fits him perfectly, we've always had problem getting him the perfect pants because his legs are shorter proportion to the rest of his body. Also got couple of Adidas shirts for $6 each, one for DH and one for my brother's birthday present. I also found a bag I been looking for, I got one for only $25, the cheapest I could find them here in Australia was for $60. Also got some stuff for my mum and DH's mum.

Unfortunately/fortunately, our resort was not near the shops so we didn't have as much opportunity to go shopping or to spend too much money! We had to get a taxi or tuk tuk to get to the markets and shopping malls. The resort did have a complimentary tuk tuk every hour that would take you to one of the nearest beach Nai Harn and they had some shops there but not that much. We took advantage of that couple of times, I went there to get my Thai foot massages, 1 hour massage for only 300 Baht (~$10 Aus) compare to the one in the resort which cost over $1,800 Baht (~$60) and then they probably then put an extra 10% for service fee and 7%VAT. The food were 2 to 3 times more expensive in the resort but because the taxi cost around 400-600 Baht one way it was not worthy going somewhere else to eat, unless you are already there for something else. We however found the buffet breakfast to be cheap, we managed to get it for $12 each per day instead of $17 by buying it all in one go. It was really nice that we probably eat too much of it. We found that we didn't really need much for lunch because of having too much for breakfast. We also found it to be cheaper to organise things ourself rather than going through reception, we went on an elephant trekking it cost us half than if we organise it through reception, and it includes free pick-up and drop off. We asked them to dropped us off to the town where we organise our tickets, which is only a block away from where we had to pick up DH's suit, which saved us 400Baht.

Wow this is a long entry. I will try to post photos later, if I don't get too lazy.