[skier_5]

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Hello everyone,

I'm leaving for Thailand in about a month, and I'll be staying for a few days in Bangkok then heading down south stopping in Krabi then going to Koh Samui and Koh Tao. Gonna be there 6 weeks all in all. Anyways, I'm budgeting about $1600 for the stay, so I'll be staying in some pos hotels with what I'm assuming to be nonexistent security. So, how should I take care of my stuff (especially my passport and money). I'm planning on just carrying my backpack around, but if I want to swim or party that's probly not going to work. What do you guys suggest?

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we just left these things in our rooms for the most part and didn't have any trouble, but i think that most places have safes or somewhere where they can put them away for you.

edit: can i suggest skipping koh samui and just going to ko phangan instead.

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Yep I picked Samui at random. But if Koh Phangan is better I'll definitely go there. Why do you think it is better? Also, how's Koh Phangan on the backpacker budget (compared to koh samui and koh tao)?

edit: skier, did you go to Chiang Mai? worth the trip?

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samui is way mroe developed and resortish and just had a weird feel to it. it didn't have that much of a local feel to it. more commercialized i guess. There was nothing that stood out about the island either.

ko phangan has the full moon party and is much smaller and really awesome imo.

chang mai was pretty awesome, but you gotta keep busy or it can get boring. Like ski said, the market is really cheap and the jungle treks are cool. Whatever you do, do the trek the first few days you are there and then you can hang out with the people you meet for the rest of the time or whatever.

ed,

I'm sure there are lots of places that you can stay in bangkok and perhaps some of the people with more experience will chime in. We just did the backpacker thing so we ended up on kho san road our first night and ended up staying at the D&D Inn which had A/c, hot showers, a pool on top for like 750 baht i think. I don't know if it's best, but it was reasonable and I would recommend it from the night or two that we stayed there.