Island hopping

Thailand's island trips fall into two families: the limestone-and-lagoon routes of the Andaman (Phang Nga, Phi Phi, Krabi) and the granite-and-coral routes of the Gulf (Ang Thong, Koh Tao). They are not interchangeable, and the season decides which one you should book.

We use private longtails wherever the distance allows. Leaving at 5:30am instead of 8am is the single biggest upgrade you can buy in Thai island tourism — it is the difference between Maya Bay with forty boats and Maya Bay with three.

The single biggest variable in island hopping is not the destination, it is how many people are on the boat. A shared speedboat carries 30 to 40 passengers and stops for 40 minutes per island; a chartered longtail carries six and can stay two hours, or leave a stop early when it turns out to be a car park. The price difference is smaller than people expect — around 3,500 baht for a private longtail against 1,400 baht per person on a group tour.

The second variable is departure time. Almost every island group in Thailand receives its visitors between 10am and 2pm. Leaving at 6:30am means the same islands, the same water, and a fraction of the people. It also means calmer sea, which matters if you are travelling with children or anyone prone to seasickness.

The third is tide. Koh Tub's sandbar, Koh Hong's lagoon entrance and the hongs of Phang Nga Bay are all tide-dependent. A good operator plans the route around the tide table the day before; a bad one runs the same itinerary every day and hopes.