Three days in Ko Samui: the comfortable island, where the sights take one morning

Two nights in the Gulf of Thailand: the big Buddha above the airport, a loop of the ring road past a mummified monk and a waterfall, and a last swim on a quiet beach.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Ko Samui
Places
5 across 3 days
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Ko Samui is 247 square kilometres of coconut palm and rainforest in the Gulf of Thailand, with a single ring road around a mountainous middle nobody builds on. Fifty years ago it had no roads at all and crossing the island meant a day's walk through jungle. Now it has an airport with near-hourly flights from Bangkok, and getting round the whole thing takes about two hours in a car.

That is the honest shape of a Samui trip. The sights are few and they are all on the ring road: a big gold Buddha, a temple with a mummified abbot sitting in a glass case, a waterfall, two famous rocks. One morning covers them. Everything else is the water, the food and whichever beach suits you.

So pick the beach carefully, because they are not interchangeable. Chaweng is long, beautiful and awake until four in the morning. Lamai is the same idea with less of it. Bophut has an old wooden shophouse village and restaurants on the sand, Mae Nam is cheaper and quieter, and the south and west coasts are where you go if you want almost nobody.

Highlights

  • A fifteen metre gold Buddha on a causeway island, facing the airport approach
  • A revered abbot who predicted his own death, still sitting in meditation behind glass
  • Purple rock and a seventy metre drop of water half an hour up a forest path
  • Two rocks at the end of Lamai beach that the island has never stopped laughing about
  • A ring road with a swim every few kilometres of it

Where to stay

Ko Samui, two nights

The island is roughly round, about twenty five kilometres across, with a granite massif of rainforest in the middle and the population living on the coastal ring. Route 4169 goes all the way round and almost everything is either on it or a short turning off it.

The airport is in the north-east, the ferry piers are on the west coast at Nathon and Lipa Noi, and the busiest beaches are on the east. Where you sleep decides the character of the trip far more than what you do during the day.

Day by day

Day 1 in Ko Samui

The big Buddha, and dinner in the old village

The plane lands a few minutes from the island's most conspicuous landmark, so start there while you are still in the north-east corner. Wat Phra Yai sits on a small island joined to the coast by a causeway, with a fifteen metre gold Buddha raised on a platform at the top of a staircase, flanked by stalls and a lot of naga serpents. It was put up in 1972, which makes it younger than most of the island's roads.

Go up for the view over the strait towards Ko Pha-ngan, and go early evening if you can, when the gold catches the light and the day trippers have gone.

Then eat at Bophut. Fisherman's Village is a couple of streets of old Chinese shophouses turned into restaurants and bars with tables out on the sand, and it is the one part of Samui that looks like it did before the resorts. Get a table facing the water.

  1. 16:30

    Wat Phra Yai

    Other

    A fifteen metre seated Buddha in gold, built in 1972 on a causeway island in the north-east corner. Free, open all day, and modest dress expected: cover your shoulders and knees.

  2. 19:00

    Dinner at Fisherman's Village

    Eat

    Old wooden shophouses at Bophut with restaurants along the beach behind them. Seafood grilled at the front, tables on the sand, and a walking street market on Friday evenings.

With more time: If the flight gets in early, the west coast near Nathon has a waterfall a short drive inland with pools to sit in, and the pier town itself is the one place on Samui that still runs on island business rather than tourism.

Day 2 in Ko Samui

Round the ring road: the mummified monk, the waterfall and the rocks

Take the ring road south and clockwise, and give the whole day to it with long stops. First is Wat Khunaram, where the body of a former abbot has sat upright in a glass case since the 1970s, in the meditation posture he died in, wearing a pair of sunglasses the temple added later. He was a meditation master who told his followers when he would die and asked to be left on display if his body did not decay. It did not.

Inland from there, a road off the ring leads to the Na Mueang falls. The first one is beside the car park; the better one is a half hour walk further up, dropping something like seventy metres over rock with a purple cast to it into a pool people swim in. Go in the wet half of the year and it is a real waterfall; go in March and it is a trickle.

Finish at the southern end of Lamai beach, where two lumps of weathered granite have made the island's rudest joke for as long as anybody can remember. It takes five minutes to see and the walk out along the rocks is worth more than the rocks are. Swim at Lamai afterwards.

  1. 09:30

    Wat Khunaram Ko Samui

    Visit

    The island's most visited temple, for the mummified abbot who has sat in meditation behind glass since the 1970s, flowers and incense in front of him. Quiet, free, and treated as a shrine rather than an oddity, so dress and behave accordingly.

  2. 11:00

    Na Mueang Waterfall

    Visit

    Two falls off Route 4169. The lower one is at the road; the upper is about thirty minutes on foot and drops some seventy metres past purple rock into a swimming pool. Shoes with grip, and go after rain.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch on the south coast

    Eat

    Simple seafood places sit along the road between the waterfall turning and Lamai. Cheaper than anywhere on Chaweng and usually better.

  4. 15:00

    Grandmother and Grandfather Rocks

    Visit

    Grandfather and Grandmother rocks, at the south end of Lamai: two granite formations that resemble exactly what the names imply, plus a boardwalk, a viewpoint and a great many stalls.

With more time: Carrying on round to the quiet south coast brings you to a gold tiled chedi at Laem Sor, on the shore and one of the island's more important shrines, with a fraction of the traffic the north gets. The inland villages on the way grow the fruit Samui is known for locally: rambutan, mangosteen, durian and langsat.

Day 3 in Ko Samui

A last swim at Silver Beach

Between Chaweng and Lamai the coast breaks up into small bays, and the best of them is Silver Beach: a short curve of sand between two headlands with clear water and rocks at each end, quieter than either of its neighbours because there is not much room for hotels.

Swim, have a long breakfast, and go. If you are leaving by ferry rather than by plane, keep the morning for the west coast instead.

  1. 09:00

    Silver Beach

    Nature

    A small bay between the two big east coast beaches, with clear water, granite headlands at each end and fewer people on it than anywhere else this close to Chaweng.

  2. 13:00

    Airport or pier

    Travel

    The airport is fifteen minutes from the east coast and open air rather than a terminal. For the ferry, allow an hour across the island to Nathon or Lipa Noi and buy the ticket at the pier.

With more time: With a later flight, Ko Pha-ngan is half an hour by fast boat from Big Buddha pier, which is enough for a beach on the north coast and a boat back the same afternoon on any day that is not the full moon.

Before you go

Getting in

Bangkok Airways built the airport and still runs most of what lands there, with departures to Bangkok nearly every hour and fares that are high by Thai standards, roughly three to five thousand baht one way if you book ahead. There are also flights from Phuket and Chiang Mai, and a handful of international routes to Singapore, Hong Kong and southern China.

The cheap way in is the ferry. Trains and buses from Bangkok run to Surat Thani on the mainland, and boats cross from the pier at Donsak to Nathon or Lipa Noi in an hour and a half or so. Combined bus and boat tickets are sold everywhere and are the standard backpacker route to the island.

Getting around

Songthaews, pickups with benches in the back, run fixed routes around the ring road until six in the evening at fixed prices of twenty to eighty baht depending how far you go. After dark they turn into taxis and you agree the fare first.

Metered taxis exist and drivers dislike using the meter. At the pier and the busy beaches you will be shown a laminated card with prices like six to eight hundred baht for the run to Chaweng; that is not the rate, and haggling to around four hundred is normal. Renting a car is cheap and much safer than a motorbike on roads with these potholes and this much rain.

Which beach

Chaweng, on the east coast, is the big one: several kilometres of white sand, the best swimming, the most people, and a nightlife strip behind it that does not stop. Lamai, further south, is the smaller version and slightly cheaper. Both have a lot of hotels on them.

For quiet, go north or south. Bophut and Mae Nam on the north coast are calmer and have the island's nicest evening out in the old wooden village at Fisherman's Village. The south and west coasts have shallower water and much less of everything, which for some people is the whole point.

The boat trip worth taking

Samui is the largest island in an archipelago of more than eighty, most of them uninhabited, protected as the Ang Thong National Marine Park. Day boats leave the piers in the morning: limestone islands standing out of shallow green water, kayaking between them, a viewpoint climb over a saltwater lake, and snorkelling.

It is a full day, it costs a few thousand baht with lunch, and it is the best thing you can do here that is not lying on sand. Book it for a settled day, since the trip is weather dependent and the crossing is open sea.

Practicalities

The tap water is not for drinking or for brushing your teeth. Bottled water is everywhere and restaurant ice is made from purified water, so that is not something to worry about.

The wet season here runs later than most of Thailand: October to December is the rainiest stretch on the Gulf coast, while the Andaman side is drying out. February to April is hot and reliable, and the sea is calmest around the middle of the year.

Samui gets written off as the package island, and it earns some of that. Chaweng is a wall of hotels and the taxi drivers will try it on with everyone.

But the interior is still forest, the south coast is still coconut plantation with the odd shrine on the shore, and you can be in warm water within half an hour of landing. Take the ring road day, then stop planning.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is three days enough for Ko Samui?
For the island itself, yes. The sights fit in one day round the ring road and the rest is beach time, which you can have in three days or three weeks. Add days if you want the marine park, a diving trip or a neighbouring island.
Samui, Pha-ngan or Tao?
Samui is the developed one, with the airport, the roads, the hospitals and the range from cheap rooms to expensive resorts. Pha-ngan is quieter except when it is not, and Tao is where people learn to dive. They are close enough that picking one as a base and taking boats is perfectly reasonable.
When is the weather good?
Not on the same schedule as the rest of the country. The Gulf coast gets its heaviest rain from October to December, when the Andaman side is at its best, and Samui is at its driest and hottest from February to April.
Do I need to rent a vehicle?
For the ring road day, yes, or take a taxi for the morning. A car is safer than a motorbike here: the roads are fast, wet and pitted, and foreign riders come off them constantly. Check your travel insurance covers whatever you get on.
Is the mummified monk a tourist attraction or a shrine?
Both, and it is a working temple. People come to pay respects, not to gawp. Cover your shoulders and knees, take your shoes off where the signs say, and do not treat it as a photo opportunity.
Can I change the plan?
Copy it into your account and edit it: swap the second day for a boat to the marine park, add nights on a quieter coast, or run it on from here to Pha-ngan.