Thailand Booking Suggestions

[drokken]

Hello Hive-mind.
I'm working on getting a honeymoon planned/booked/and paid for, with us spending 3 weeks in Thailand. I already have the flights done, and found an incredible deal for $1,100 per person round trip with a total duration of 24 hours.

We aren't wanting to spend a bunch of time doing the westerner BS. We want to hit up some cool smaller villages and just hang with the locals. We mainly want to help out on some farms and learn to cook traditionally. 
Mainly to just get away from all the BS in america and just enjoy other people and their culture.

With that being said... lol
I do want to splurge at least one night or two and get a really nice villa. Something that will make my future wife feel like a queen.

I have a close friend who has been to Thailand several times and he gave me a pretty good list of villages and towns to visit. Ko Lanta, Krabi, Pai, and Phi Phi don being a few of the stops.

I wanted to spend 1 day in Phuket as we would be catching a domestic flight from there heading east.
I found this resort that looks absolutely incredible!
https://www.sripanwa.com/ 

I was looking into the Villas and saw that they are going from $900-$1,200 USD :o
I rather not spend that much just for one night, but If I have to I will.... I rather spend that money on other aspects of the honeymoon.
I was reading (because of coarse, if it's on the internet, it's true) that a lot of these sites will take advantage of your region and charge more accordingly.
I read that Chineese booking sites get some of these high priced villas for half the cost.
If that IS the case, I would much rather pay that price, rather than some inflated number because I'm from america. (then again, maybe I'm just paranoid??)

Other than the flight, and the one night we are going to splurge on a nice villa. I was going to pay for everything else once we're there. I just wanted to lock down my flights and one night resort now so I can pay in advance, so I'm not carrying around a ton of money.

Are there any sites or agents you could recommend to help save on some of these costs?
For the rest of the time, My friend sent me a big list of places he stayed and rated them good to bad for me. Most of them are $25-$45 a night and look really nice.

And not to side track the main purpose of this post, but are there any of those "magical" / "must see" spots we should make an effort to go see? We will primarily be down by the islands, but will be spending 4-6 days up north of Bangkok.
Just trying to make this as memorable as I can for us. We will probably be back in the future if it's as amazing as we've been told.

Any traveling 101 tips you would have? (money, security, domestic travels, edicate, traditions etc). We plan on renting scooters and taking domestic flights to get around (about $100 a person right? do we need to book in advance?) 
*I read not to point your feet at people, and to be respectful of monasteries (dress proper). Just not wanting to come off as a typical idiot american (I travel abroad to Europe for work a lot and we do have a stereotype lol, at least the younger generation does)*

Just wanting to cover all my bases. We leave out mid November.

Just trying to cut a $1,200 villa down to maybe $600-$800 if that's even possible? Just something I read. Was hoping for some noob-ish advice.

Thanks so much guy! Really appreciate any advice you can share :)

(I'm also going to post this on Reddit as well)