Koh Larn: the Island Sold as Coral Island

Koh Larn is a small island about seven kilometres off Pattaya, and it is the answer to the one real objection to a Pattaya beach holiday. The mainland bay is a working anchorage. This is where the clear water is.

It is also sold to you under a name it does not have, and the measured sea does the opposite of what the sales pitch implies. Both of those are worth five minutes before you book.

The name

The island is Koh Larn. It is sold almost everywhere as Coral Island, which is a trade name the boat operators use and not a name the place has.

That would be a footnote except that the invented name is winning. Searches for “coral island” and its variants run at about 11,450 a month worldwide against roughly 4,100 for Koh Larn: nearly three to one in favour of the name that was made up.

It matters for one practical reason. “Coral Island” sets an expectation of reef, and the coral here has suffered the way most shallow coral near a large resort city has. The snorkelling is pleasant rather than remarkable. Go for clear water and a beach day and you will be happy; go for a reef because the name promised one and you will not.

What the measurements say, and what they cannot

Koh Larn falls in its own cells of the marine model, separate from the mainland, which is not a given at five-kilometre resolution and means the comparison below is a real one rather than the same numbers printed twice.

The island is rougher than the mainland in every month of the year, by about 20 per cent at Tawaen and 24 per cent at Samae. That is the opposite of what most people assume when they are told the water is better out there, and the reason is simply the map: Koh Larn sits in open water with nothing between it and the Gulf, while Pattaya Beach is tucked inside a bay.

Now the honest part. The percentages are large and the difference is five to nine centimetres. Nobody standing in the sea can feel that, and this page is not going to pretend it changes a day. What it does do is settle the question of whether the island is calmer, because it is not, and that claim gets made.

And the thing that actually sends people out here, water clarity, is not in our data at all. The marine model gives wave height and sea temperature. It does not measure turbidity, and we are not going to convert an observation into a figure to make the page look more measured than it is. The water is visibly clearer at Koh Larn. That is an observation, and it is the correct reason to go.

Getting there, and the boat that decides your day

Everything leaves from Bali Hai pier at the southern end of Pattaya Beach, which is also the far end of Walking Street and a fifteen-minute walk from most of the centre.

The last boat is the fact to plan around, and it is the same rule this site applies to every Thai island: work backwards from the boat rather than forwards from breakfast. Missing the last scheduled ferry means chartering a speedboat at whatever the evening price turns out to be, or staying the night.

Schedules here move with the season, the weather and the passenger numbers, so we publish none of them as a timetable. Read the board at the pier on the day, and note which pier your return leaves from, because a boat that landed you at Tawaen does not necessarily collect you there.

Speedboats mostly go when they are full rather than to a clock. That makes them quick and it makes the departure time a negotiation.

The beaches

Tawaen is the big one on the northeast side and where almost every day trip lands. Everything is laid on: loungers, umbrellas, food, jet skis, parasailing and the noise that comes with all of it. It is a good beach having a busy day, and between about ten and three it is very busy indeed.

Samae, on the west side, has the same water and a smaller share of the crowd, and it faces the sunset. It is the one to walk or ride over the hill to if Tawaen is not what you wanted.

Nual, in the south, is the small quiet cove and the furthest from the pier. It is also known as Monkey Beach, and the monkeys are real and are not a photo opportunity: keep food out of sight and do not feed them.

Getting between them is by songthaew, hired scooter or on foot. The island is small enough that none of it is far, and steep enough that walking it in the middle of the day is warm work.

The day trip, and the alternative to it

Koh Larn is sold overwhelmingly as a packaged day: speedboat out, a stop for snorkelling, lunch, a beach, back. That works, and it puts you on Tawaen at exactly the hour Tawaen is fullest.

Two cheap improvements. Go on a weekday, because at weekends Bangkok arrives and the island takes it the way Koh Samet does. And go under your own steam on the public ferry, early, which costs a fraction of the tour and lets you leave Tawaen for one of the other beaches.

The version almost nobody does is staying the night. There are rooms in the village at Na Baan and behind the main beaches. After the last ferries the day-trippers are gone, the beach operations pack up, and what is left is a small Thai island with a village on it. If the island appeals at all, this is the way to see it.

What it is not

It is not undiscovered, it is not a reef, and it is not quiet in the middle of the day. It is a clear-water beach forty minutes from a city of a hundred thousand people, which is a genuinely useful thing to have and is exactly what it is.

How the three mainland beaches compare, and why the bay looks the way it does, is on the beaches page. The rest of the city’s list is on things to do, and the guide is at Pattaya.