Koh Samet · Central Thailand
Koh Samet Travel Guide
Koh Samet is the island Bangkok goes to for the weekend: three hours by road and forty minutes by boat, inside a national park, with white sand on its eastern side and very little on the rest of it. It is busiest at weekends and empty midweek, which is the whole trick to it.
- Dry season
- November to April 6 months under 150mm
- Best for
- The closest good beach to Bangkok
- Airport
- Bangkok, then about 3h by road
- Getting around
- On foot and songthaew
Koh Samet is the closest genuinely good beach to Bangkok, and its whole character follows from that. It is a small island off Rayong on the eastern seaboard, inside a national park, and it fills with Bangkok families and couples on Friday evening and empties again on Sunday night.
Midweek it is one of the quietest islands in Thailand. That gap is the single most useful thing to know about it.
The beaches
Almost all of them are on the east coast, which faces the sunrise and is sheltered from the southwest monsoon. The sand is genuinely white and squeaks underfoot, which is unusual on this side of the country.
Sai Kaew at the north end is the longest and busiest, with most of the hotels and the restaurants that put tables on the sand at night. Ao Phai and Ao Tub Tim just south are smaller and quieter versions of the same thing. Ao Wai and Ao Kiu further down are small bays with one resort each and a long walk or a taxi to anywhere else.
The west coast has one beach, Ao Prao, and the sunset.
The park fee
Koh Samet is inside Khao Laem Ya–Mu Ko Samet national park and there is an entry fee collected on arrival at the pier or on the island. Foreign visitors pay considerably more than Thais, which is standard at Thai national parks. Keep the ticket.
The weather
Samet is on the eastern seaboard rather than on either of the coasts this site usually talks about, and it runs closer to Bangkok’s calendar than to Phuket’s: driest from November to February, wettest from May to October. Because the beaches face east they are sheltered from the southwest monsoon, so even in the wet months the water here is usually calm.
Getting there
Three to four hours from Bangkok by bus or minivan to Ban Phe, then a forty-minute ferry or a fifteen-minute speedboat to Na Dan pier. The last ferry back is late afternoon, which catches people out on a Sunday.
It is close enough to do as an overnight from Bangkok, which almost nobody outside Thailand does and which works very well.
How long to give it
Two or three nights, midweek if you can choose. It is a beach and not much else, and that is what it is for.