How to Get to Samui
We looked for tickets, and bought them, on euroavia.ru from FinnAir. The route was Pulkovo to Helsinki, three hours there, then Helsinki to Bangkok. Overall everything was good: convenient and quite comfortable. From Bangkok to Samui we bought tickets in advance from Bangkok Airways. We chose that because it was the same airport, and because we wanted to get to the island faster instead of traveling by bus and boat. We left four hours between flights and made it just barely: the Bangkok airport is cyclopean, and the Finns arrived a little late. As said above, do not save money on the road. Ours took more than a day, almost without sleep, and it was hard. From Samui airport to the house: taxi.
The main hint we used looked like this. I decided to leave it as it was, in the author's version, so to speak.
I fly Thai Airways when there is a chance to buy it. Tickets are picked up at the office in Moscow, because Aviasales goes insane and sells them veeeery expensively. These are Thailand's local lines, nine hours on average with no transfers. The optimal price for the period is 24k. Anything higher is already overpaying. The best. Watch for special offers, you may get lucky. Second in the top: Emirates. Also five-star, comparable price, best option is one transfer in Dubai. Convenient and inexpensive. Third is Doha. Four-star with five-star ambitions. Good people. If you are lucky, price from 18k. If not lucky, season. 20-22, transfer in Doha. I know Etihad is also okay. I have never flown them myself, unlike the previous three, but friends say they are fine. Advice: you cannot experiment with a road that lasts from 10 to 30 hours. You cannot save too much on it. You need to fly proven five-star airlines.
Where to search for tickets depends on how you are flying in general. There is a budget option. But then you go to Moscow before the trip and watch Turdom for tickets at, say, 150 dollars, since you did not take care of it in advance, like me. Luck is about 90 percent, but departure is immediate. You catch them, buy them, and an hour later you rush to the airport. Downsides: nerves, hardcore.
In all other cases, Aviasales. In critical situations with Thai Airways, Sindbad also helped me. In Petersburg they have an office near Vosstaniya. They got tickets for 22k, which is completely wild for the season.
Once you have tickets from Moscow to BKK, you immediately need to take care of tickets from BKK to the island. Where are you going, Samui? History knows several options here.
1. The trump option. You take and buy online, immediately, because it is crazy and because even a month ahead they are already hard to buy, tickets from Bangkok Airways for at least 3200 rubles one way. One way! The maximum is about eight thousand, I think. And the ones for three run out fast. Why? Because it is a monopoly and AirAsia does not fly there, they do not have the rights. In short, by plane there is no other option. But it is a one-hour flight, and there you are at the wonderful Samui airport.
The optimal connection is from an hour and a half between planes. Bonus: the same airport. You arrive from Moscow at Suvarnabhumi and fly to the island from there too. You just go up a couple of floors.
2. The sightseeing option. For example, there are no plane tickets, or they are completely unacceptable at that price. You go to the Nok Air site and buy a package: flight plus bus plus boat. Price up to 2k per person. I think 1800. One way.
Mentally add a taxi for the whole group from one airport to the other. You need Don Mueang. One hour in traffic, half an hour without traffic. 300-400 rubles. Take a taxi STRICTLY AT THE TAXI BOOTH; it is the exit from the second floor of Suvarnabhumi to the outside area, where you can smoke and where the trash bins are.
Then you still have about ten hours of transfer. It is interesting and not nearly as exhausting as it may seem. First you fly for an hour to Surat Thani province. You get out, sit on a bus, a very, very comfortable one, Russia does not have buses like that, and ride for a couple of hours to the water. You watch everyday life and customs from the window. Then you board a very large barge and sail another five hours across the gulf. You watch a beautiful sunset. At about seven in the evening, I think, you moor at Samui.
There is a third option, but I hope you will take care of everything in advance and it will not come to that.
Damn, I have a ridiculous number of typos.
How we ended up getting there.
We decided to fly from Pulkovo rather than from Moscow. We looked for tickets, and bought them, on euroavia.ru from FinnAir. The route was Pulkovo to Helsinki, three hours there, then Helsinki to Bangkok. Overall everything was good: convenient and quite comfortable. From Bangkok to Samui we bought tickets in advance from Bangkok Airways. We chose that because it was the same airport, and because we wanted to get to the island faster instead of traveling by bus and boat. We left four hours between flights and made it just barely: the Bangkok airport is cyclopean, and the Finns arrived a little late. As said above, do not save money on the road. Ours took more than a day, almost without sleep, and it was hard. From Samui airport to the house: taxi.
This turned out to be a very useful source: sites.google.com/site/leprosamui
December 10. Air +31, water +30.