A Day Trip From Koh Samui To Koh Tao And Nang Yuan

If you are staying on Koh Samui for any length of time, one of the things you must do it take a day trip to Koh Tao and Nang Yuan islands. While you can stay overnight at both of these islands, Nang Yuan at least can be completely covered in just a couple hours.

Koh Tao is also known as Turtle Island, and is a great spot for snorkeling and diving. There are some great beaches there, but if you are taking an excursion, chances are you will only be able to see one or two beaches. We went to Mango Beach, which was beautiful, but I do wish we were able to see more of the island rather than just a day trip. That being said, the overall excursion was worth it because we got to see Koh Nang Yuan!

If you want to do it by yourself than you can arrange a ferry through BookAWay and enjoy this beautiful place as much as you want.

Koh Nang Yuan is one of the most famous islands in the world. It is privately owned, and there is just one restaurant and one hotel. To get there you have to either be staying at the hotel, or take a tour with a company that pays docking fees at the port. That being said, it is one of the best places to visit and I fully recommend it to everyone staying on Koh Samui.

You can get tickets for this excursion at any of the tour operators on Koh Samui. We bought ours from an operator in Chaweng Noi after we had a dinner there, and they were 500 baht per person, however as we were a group of 4 people, we negotiated down to 400 per person. I’m sure you can get better deals if you try harder, but we were full from dinner, and just wanted to head back to our villa to drink and enjoy the evening.

Cody had invited his friend from high school, Max, and Max’s sister, to stay with us at the villa and our group of 4 were destined to have a great trip.

Koh Tao Location

Our day begins at the designated meeting point on Bophut beach. If you arrange it with the tour operator, they do offer pick up and drop off services from your accommodations, which we negotiated into the price of the tickets. While waiting for the boat to depart, we were offered some pastries and coffee which was a nice wake up as it was just after 9 am.

Koh Nang Yuan Location

The boat to Nang Yuan takes about an hour and the motor boat we were in was packed with day-trippers. The tour guide explained the rules of Nang Yuan island. Essentially, you are forbidden from bringing any single use plastics, such as water or soda bottles, as well as water shoes. This is to protect the corals and natural beauty of the island.

Nang Yuan is actually comprised of three small hills connected with sandbars. The sand is mostly broken coral, so it is not the soft white sand you get on Koh Samui or Koh Tao, so you have to be careful when you walk. That being said, everywhere you look is just stunning.

We stayed on the island for around 2 hours, which gives enough time to snorkel, take pictures, and if you want, hike to the top of one of the hills and get a great view of the island. I advise you to do the hike first and get the view, then go snorkeling after and recover in the refreshingly temperate water. The snorkel equipment was included in our ticket price so we didn’t have to bring our own.

Sadly a lot of the coral has died, which is all too common the world over these days, but the tropical fish are still there and in large numbers. Even just snorkeling you can see plenty of beautiful creatures. You can pay extra to go scuba diving, but we just stuck with snorkeling.

There is one hotel and one restaurant on the island. I recommend not staying at the hotel as we talked to some of the guests and they did not have pleasant things to say about it. We did eat at the restaurant and were thoroughly not impressed. The quality was adequate but the price was exorbitant which makes sense because the operator essentially has a monopoly on everything sold on the island.

When we were ready to go, we all gathered at the pier and then went back to the speed boat to head to Koh Tao. There we went to Mango Bay for a buffet lunch, and the ability to kayak around the bay and to do more snorkeling. The food here was satisfactory, but as the tour was less than $15 a person, we really didn’t care about the food anyways.

At the end of the trip we went to Ao Hin Wong which was one of the best snorkeling spots we’ve been to on Koh Tao. It is a rocky bay so the boat doesn’t dock, but rather drop anchor. This gave us time to snorkel all over the bay.

We arrived back at the beach we departed from on Bophut and offered the chance to buy a commemorative plate with a picture of the trip. Cody and I normally never buy these sorts of things, but it was Max’s first trip to Thailand and he bought one for us.

I do recommend finding a tour like this if you want to have an easy way to see Koh Nang Yuan, but if you want to see a lot of Koh Tao you should definitely plan on staying over there a few nights and go exploring all around the island.

Find out more about things to do in Koh Samui