Koh Samet Is Ninety Minutes From Bangkok and Almost Nobody Stays the Night
Six beaches, a national park fee, and a fire ban on half the island. How to get there, what it costs, and why the day-trippers all leave at four and you should not.
Everybody comes to Koh Samet for the day. They get the 11:30am boat, walk to a beach that is a ten-minute walk from the pier, eat a fried chicken and a basket of pineapple, take a photograph with their feet in the water, and get back on the same boat at four.
They have done it entirely wrong and there is a version of this island that is thirty seconds away from the beach they are already standing on.
Last verified 8 October 2026. Ferry timetables change seasonally; the park fee does not.
Getting there: two decisions, and one of them is a mistake people make constantly
You go via Ban Phe, in Rayong province. Ban Phe is the port town. Three piers serve Koh Samet and they are not interchangeable for where you are staying, so check which pier your bed is at before you buy anything.
The wooden ferry takes 40 to 45 minutes and costs 50 to 70 baht. The speedboat takes 15 to 20 minutes and costs 100 to 150 baht. Services run in daylight only, roughly 7am to 6pm, and stop when they are full, so they are more like buses than trains.
The decision people get wrong is the origin. From Bangkok, the instinct is to fly or to drive. Drive, or take a bus to Pattaya and go from there. It is about three hours from Bangkok, a few hours to Pattaya, and then a short hop down the coast to Ban Phe. Everyone ends up on the 07:30 boat out of Pattaya via a package van, and it is the standard route.
The fee nobody forgets. Koh Samet is a national park — Khao Laem Ya-Mu Ko Samet — and there is a gate. 200 baht for foreign adults, 100 for children, Thais pay 40 and 20. There is also a 20 baht pier maintenance charge. You pay at the booth as you leave the main Na Dan pier, and you get a ticket. It is not a scam and it is not optional, and it is the first thing you are asked about if you arrive at a secondary beach by boat.
Which beach
The island has a main settlement at Na Dan where the boats land, and beaches strung along the coast from there. Ao Wai and Ao Kiu are small and local. Vong Duern is the one with a proper strip of restaurants and kayaks for hire. Ao Prao is further round and quieter.
My recommendation is to not decide. Arrive, walk two hundred metres in any direction, and stop at the first beach with shade and no jet skis. The island is not big. You can see most of it in a day on foot and that is the entire point of it.
The exception is the party. If you want the party, it is in the Na Dan area, it is loud, and it is fine. Just know that is a different holiday from the one the island is actually good at.
What the island is really for
It is a national park. There is forest, there is a marine park, and there is a rule against building that has kept the island low and spread out in a way that most Thai islands are not.
Kayak to Ko Klet, the bird island just off the coast, in about half an hour of paddling. It is the best thing on Koh Samet and nearly nobody does it because they came for the day.
And there is a hard fire ban on the Koh Phai side of the island — the national park half — for a very good reason. It is enforced, and it is why half this island still looks the way it does. Respect it.
Stay overnight. This is the whole point.
The day trip is a commute with a swim in it. The overnight version is a different island. The bars close, the restaurants go quiet, and by seven in the morning the beach that had a queue at noon is empty and the water is flat and the only things on it are kayaks and one boat.
The obvious move, if you are coming from Bangkok, is a two-night stay: arrive on the morning boat, sleep, get the morning ferry back the next day having seen the island when nobody is on it. It costs one extra night of budget and it converts a forgettable day trip into the best two days of a week.
