Best Places to Visit in Thailand: The Trat Islands

If you are drawing up a shortlist of the best places to visit in Thailand for the next six months, this is the week the eastern seaboard earns its place on it. The Trat islands — Koh Chang, Koh Mak and Koh Kood — have just come out of the rains, the speedboats are back in the water, and Bangkok Airways moves to its winter Trat timetable on 25 October. For the next six months these are some of the calmest, clearest and least crowded Thailand islands you can reach from Bangkok in a morning.

They are also the ones most visitors never get to. Trat province sits in the far south-east corner of the country, and the islands scattered off it belong to Mu Ko Chang National Park — roughly 650 square kilometres of sea and 52 islands. The sea here is on the Gulf side, so the pattern is almost the opposite of Phuket and Krabi: the good months run from about November to April, and the quiet, wet months are May to October.

Why Trat is one of the best places to visit in Thailand right now

Thailand logged 23.94 million international arrivals in the first nine months of 2026, and the overwhelming majority went to five places: Bangkok, Phuket, Pattaya, Chiang Mai and Koh Samui. Trat is not on that list, which is the point. There is no airport on any of the three islands and no mass-market pier. What there is: granite headlands, rainforest that runs down to the sand, and water that in February is the colour people expect from a brochure.

The three islands are also neatly graded, which makes them unusually easy to plan around. Koh Chang is the big one with roads, ATMs and dive shops. Koh Mak is the small flat one you can walk across. Koh Kood is the quiet one. Pick by how much you want to be left alone.

Koh Kood: the quiet end of the Thailand islands

Thailand's fourth-largest island has about 2,000 residents and one road running its length. Koh Kood travel is built almost entirely around three or four bays — Ao Bang Bao, Khlong Chao, Ao Noi and Ao Phrao — each with a strip of resorts, a few restaurants and very little else. Scooter hire runs 250–300 baht a day, and the single road makes it hard to get lost.

The island's set piece is Khlong Chao waterfall, a three-tier fall about ten minutes inland from Khlong Chao beach, with a deep pool at the base that is genuinely swimmable. You can kayak most of the way up the canal from the beach for around 200 baht a day, which is the better approach. Three nights is the minimum that makes the journey worth it.

What the national park costs

Mu Ko Chang National Park charges 200 baht for adult foreign visitors and 100 baht for children aged three to fourteen, collected at the gated attractions rather than on arrival. On Koh Chang that means Khlong Plu and Than Mayom waterfalls; Than Mayom opens 09.00–16.30 and Khlong Plu roughly 08.00–16.30. Several smaller falls — Khlong Neung, Khiri Phet, Khlong Nonsi — charge nothing. Keep the ticket: it covers you for the day.

Koh Mak: small, flat and walkable

Koh Mak is sixteen square kilometres of coconut and rubber plantation with two good beaches on opposite sides of a narrow waist, so you can watch sunrise on one and sunset on the other with a twenty-minute walk in between. No high-rises, no jet skis, and a local development charter that has kept it that way. Bicycles are 100–150 baht a day and are all you need. Two nights is about right, three if you want a snorkelling trip out to Koh Rang.

Koh Chang: the easiest of the three to reach

Koh Chang is Thailand's second-largest island and the only one of the three with a car ferry, which is why most first-timers start here. The west coast is a chain of beaches on one road: White Sand Beach at the busy end, Klong Prao in the middle with the widest sand, Kai Bae for the viewpoint and the sunsets, and Lonely Beach further south, which stopped being lonely years ago but still has the cheapest rooms. Inland is almost all national park, with Salak Phet peak at around 740 metres and free mangrove boardwalks at Salak Khok. Our Koh Chang destination guide takes the beaches one by one, and the Trat guide covers the mainland side.

Getting there from Bangkok

Fly to Trat

Bangkok Airways is the only airline on the route and flies three times a day from Suvarnabhumi to Trat, about an hour in the air and roughly three hours door to door. The winter timetable starts on 25 October 2026: the midday flight shifts to 12.40 outbound and 14.15 back, while the 08.10 and 16.15 departures move by only a few minutes. One-way fares start around 2,800 baht.

Trat airport is about 20 km from the Koh Chang ferry pier, 25 km from Laem Ngop and 50 km from Laem Sok, the Koh Kood pier. A shared minibus to Laem Sok including the boat runs 1,000–1,100 baht per person; a private SUV for two or three is about 1,600 baht. Worth knowing before you book: the late-afternoon arrival has no onward ferry connection, so an evening flight means a night on the mainland.

Bus, minivan or private car

The cheapest route is the 999 bus from Ekkamai at 07.45 or Suvarnabhumi bus station at 08.20 — about six hours to the pier for roughly 329 baht, plus 90 baht for the ferry. Airport minibuses with the ferry included leave Suvarnabhumi at 07.00 and 11.00 and cost 700 baht to Kai Bae, 750 to Lonely Beach and 800 to Bang Bao. A Khao San van is about 900 baht; a private car is from about 3,200 baht and takes five hours.

The boats

For Koh Chang, the car ferry crosses from Ao Thammachat to Ao Sapparot between 06.30 and 18.30, leaving when it fills, 25–35 minutes: 90 baht per adult, 90 for a motorbike, 200 for a car, cash only. Songthaews from the pier are 50 baht to White Sand Beach and 150 to Bang Bao.

For Koh Kood, boats leave Laem Sok pier for about 600 baht and take one hour to an hour and twenty minutes, with Boonsiri, Seudamgo and Koh Kood Express all on the route. Koh Mak is 550 baht from Laem Ngop, about an hour. Island-to-island boats from Koh Chang to Koh Kood run 1 November to 30 April only, 700 baht on a wooden boat up to 1,200 by speedboat, and most call at Koh Mak on the way — which is what makes a three-island hop practical rather than theoretical.

Fitting the islands into a Thailand itinerary

Ten days is the sweet spot: two nights in Bangkok, then the eastern seaboard. A sensible Thailand itinerary runs Bangkok to Koh Chang by bus, three nights there, the inter-island boat to Koh Mak for two, then Koh Kood for three, and the flight home from Trat. That keeps you on one side of the country and out of airports.

If you want a city stop on the way, Pattaya is roughly halfway along the coast and splits the drive neatly. The list of things to do in Pattaya is longer than its reputation suggests, and the Koh Larn beaches are a 30-baht public ferry from Bali Hai Pier — our Pattaya and Jomtien guide has the timetable and Koh Larn has its own page. Back in the capital, give one evening to Bangkok street food in Yaowarat before you head east; the stalls open around 18.00.

For the Thai culture side of the trip, Trat town is worth half a day on the way through — a wooden shophouse quarter, a morning market and a night market that costs almost nothing. And if you are timing a trip, the cool season has just begun, which is the single most useful fact in Thailand vacation planning this month.

Practical tips

• Book the boat, not just the bed. High-season sailings to Koh Kood and Koh Mak are limited and the late ones sell out; resorts will usually arrange transfers if you ask when you reserve.
• Carry cash. The Koh Chang car ferry is cash only, Koh Mak has a handful of ATMs and Koh Kood has very few. Draw baht on the mainland.
• Check the island-hop dates. Koh Chang–Koh Kood boats run 1 November to 30 April. Outside that window you backtrack to the mainland.
• Keep the park ticket. 200 baht covers the day across Mu Ko Chang National Park's gated sites, so do two waterfalls on one ticket.
• Avoid an evening flight into Trat unless you are happy with a mainland night — the last ferries have gone by then.
• Go before Christmas or after mid-January. Late December is the one stretch when Koh Chang's west coast fills up and rates double.

None of this is a secret, exactly — Koh Chang has had a road and a ferry for decades. But it remains the rare corner of the country where you can travel to Thailand in the peak month of the year, pay low-season prices two islands along, and still be back at Suvarnabhumi in an afternoon. On that measure the Trat archipelago is quietly among the best places to visit in Thailand between now and April.