Getting Around Koh Chang: Songthaews, Scooters and Those Hills

At a glance

A songthaew is a shared pick-up truck on a fixed route, and the fare is per person

There is no timetable and no meter. Trucks run the west coast road between the ferry pier and Bang Bao, two benches in the back under a roof, and you catch one by standing on the main road and putting your arm out. Tell the driver the beach or the resort name, agree the fare in baht before you climb in, and pay when you get out.

Three things determine what you pay:

• How far you are going. Fares step up beach by beach, so White Sand to Klong Prao is cheap and the pier to Klong Kloi is four times as much.
• How many people are already aboard. The published fares are per person and assume the truck is filling up. One local fare table states a two-person minimum on private hire, so a solo traveller flagging an empty songthaew pays double. Another prints its whole table on the assumption of ten passengers, which is why its numbers run higher.
• Whether you want a door drop. Going down a side road to a specific resort costs roughly 50 THB (about US$1.50) per person on top.

Songthaews heading back to the ferry carry a yellow "To Pier" sign in the windscreen, which is the one piece of signage on the island worth learning. If you are not on the main road, any resort will phone for one, though give them about an hour's notice for a pier run.

Night availability is the constraint that matters most on arrival day. The last scheduled songthaew of the day runs around 17:00, with some sources stretching to 17:45. Working back from that, the 15:45 sailing is the last one that reliably lands you while trucks are still running; Getting to Koh Chang takes the rest of the ladder back through the timetable and explains why nothing scheduled meets the 18:30 boat. A pier pickup at that hour is an arrangement you make with your resort before you travel. It is not part of a mainland road transfer, which ends at the pier on the Trat side.

After that you are into private charter and negotiation rather than a service. One local guide describes late-night taxis operating until roughly 02:00 or 03:00 in high season; that is a description of what drivers sometimes do, not a scheduled run, and it is uncorroborated. Fares rise by at least 50 THB per journey late at night, though one source puts the cut-off at 22:00 and the other at 23:00.

No source publishes what a pier pickup or an after-dark run to a west coast beach costs. Neither of the two 2026 local fare tables prints a night rate for the pier run, and neither prints a whole-vehicle rate between west coast beaches. The only published whole-vehicle figure anywhere on the island is the 1,000 THB (about US$30) quoted for the east coast run to Salak Phet, and the only published night rule is the surcharge of at least 50 THB a journey. So agree the price in baht with your resort before you travel — for that beach, at that hour — rather than finding out on an unlit pier after the last boat. The same applies to dinner two beaches away: fix the return before you set out.

The two published fare tables disagree by up to 100 baht, so agree the price before you get in

Koh Chang's songthaew fares are published by two long-running local guides, both updated in 2026, and they do not match. On some routes the gap is 20 THB; on the pier-to-Bang-Bao run it is 50 THB, and on the pier to Klong Kloi it is 50 THB again. Neither is wrong exactly: one prints the fare a filling truck charges, the other prints a table that assumes a minimum of ten passengers and reads as the higher end of what drivers actually ask. Treat both columns below as the band you are negotiating inside.

From the ferry pier at Ao Sapparot (per person, one way):

Beach to beach (per person, one way):

Add roughly 50 THB per person for a drop-off down a side road, and 50–100 THB for the resorts spread around Bang Bao bay or at the far end of Klong Kloi.

The east coast is the one route where the two guides contradict each other outright. One states a shared service to Salak Phet at 100 THB (about US$3) per person, running three times a day at 09:00, 11:00 and 15:00, returning at 10:00, 12:00 and 16:00. The other states flatly that songthaews no longer run down the east coast at all and that it is private charter only, at 1,000 THB (about US$30) for the whole vehicle. Both were current as of 2026 and neither position can be reconciled with the other, so the shared service may or may not exist on the day you want it. Confirm at your resort that morning, and budget for a whole vehicle at 1,000 THB in case the answer is that nothing shared runs.

The scooter risk on Koh Chang is concentrated in two hill sections, and you ride both of them on your first day

Renting a scooter is the cheapest way to move around Koh Chang and, for a competent rider, the most useful. It is also the single most likely thing to end your trip in a hospital. Local guides who have lived on the island for years describe accidents as very frequent, say that riders new to scooters are on a very steep learning curve, and note that if you ride the length of the island on any given day you will probably pass a fresh crash. There is no published injury or fatality count for Koh Chang — not from the provincial authorities, the tourist police or the island hospital — so any rate you are quoted is a guess. The absence of a statistic is not evidence the problem is small.

Two named stretches of the west coast road cause most of the trouble:

• Klong Son to White Sand Beach — "the Big Hill." Hairpin bends, heavily laden trucks grinding up in low gear, and drivers overtaking on blind corners. This is the first thing you meet after the pier, so it is the section riders hit before they have any feel for the bike.
• Kai Bae south to Bang Bao. Narrow, undulating, with several very steep climbs and hairpins. Descending this on a scooter with tired brakes, in rain, on sand washed across the carriageway, is how experienced riders come off.

Add uneven surfaces, sand and debris on the road after rain, and gradients that a 125cc automatic scooter's rear drum brake was not designed for, and the risk is not evenly spread across the island. It is concentrated in a handful of kilometres you will ride on your first and last day.

The crash local guides describe most often has a specific shape. Lonely Beach is where the bars run latest, the beaches are too far apart to walk between, there is no street lighting outside the built-up strips, and the last scheduled songthaew went at 17:00. What is left is the ride home: an unlit hill, after midnight, after drinking, on a bike you collected that morning. The way out of it is to arrange the ride back before you go out rather than at 01:00. Ride covered, too. Shorts and flip-flops are what turn a low-speed slide into a skin graft.

Nobody publishes how much money that comes to. There is no going rate for a damage claim on a dropped rental, no published tariff for a night on the ward at the island's private hospital, and no published price for the fast-boat medical transfer to the mainland — Eating, Sleeping and Practical Koh Chang has what is known about island medical care, and the evacuation cost is unpublished there too. So the exposure has no ceiling you can look up before you decide. Weigh it against 150 THB a day on that basis, not on the assumption that it is small.

Before you ride away, do three things. Test the brakes on flat ground before you go anywhere near a hill. Look at the tyres and refuse any bike with skinny or visibly worn rubber. Photograph every existing scratch and dent, and get them written on the rental form — damage disputes on return are common, and your photos are the only evidence you will have.

Helmets are compulsory and mostly supplied free. Police set up a checkpoint roughly once a week and fine riders without one 200 THB (about US$6). That fine is trivial; the reason to wear the helmet is the hills.

The passport deposit, and why to refuse it

Almost every shop wants ID as security, and most now ask for your passport rather than a photocopy. The shops have a real reason: they have been left with wrecked bikes and no way to recover the cost. That does not make it a good deal for you.

Handing over your passport gives the shop leverage in any dispute about damage, and you are the one who needs the document to check into a hotel, buy a SIM, get treated at the private hospital or leave the country. Finding a shop that accepts only a photocopy is getting harder, but the workable alternative exists: offer a cash deposit, typically 2,000–3,000 THB (about US$60–90), and take a receipt. Some rental operators, particularly those booking through platforms, advertise that they do not hold passports. If a shop insists on the passport and nothing else, walk to the next one. On the west coast there is always a next one.

Koh Chang has a horseshoe road, not a loop, and the missing 10 km shapes every day you plan

The road runs down the west coast from the north to Bang Bao and Klong Kloi, and separately down the east coast to Salak Phet, and then it stops. Between those two southern ends there is a gap of about 10 km with no through route.

The reason is the island itself. Roughly 75% of Koh Chang is protected inside Mu Ko Chang National Park (Inland Koh Chang covers the park and what that protection means on the ground), the interior is steep jungle prone to landslides and erosion, a 2007 cabinet resolution restricted new road building in protected areas, and land access disputes and funding gaps did the rest. Construction started around 2003 and stopped in 2004.

What survives of the abandoned sections is not a shortcut. The Salak Phet end is in extremely bad condition and needs a 4WD; the Bang Bao end is described as almost impassable and finishes at a collapsed bridge. People do ride the Salak Phet fragment to reach remote Wai Chek beach, over broken road and river crossings, but it is not a scooter route for a hire bike and it is certainly not a way to get from one side of the island to the other.

Do not plan a trip around a new road. This one has been approved on paper before and none has been built. The current version is moving again on paper: a fresh environmental impact assessment approved in January 2026, opening a five-year window for final approvals; around 650 million THB discussed for 11.26 km of road, with contractor selection during 2026, construction possibly starting in early 2027 and completion targeted for early 2030. That timeline comes from a single local source and is an intention, not a schedule.

What this means for your day. Anything on the east coast — Salak Phet, Salak Kok, Than Mayom waterfall — is a there-and-back trip retracing the north of the island, not a leg of a circuit. Salak Phet sits around 25 km from the ferry pier by the only road that reaches it. If you are staying at Lonely Beach or Bang Bao and want to see the east coast, you are looking at a long half-day minimum. See Inland Koh Chang for what is at the far end of those roads.

A car and driver buys the two things a songthaew cannot: luggage space and a departure time you choose

For a lot of trips the shared truck is the right answer and paying more would be waste. It stops being the right answer in four specific situations.

Families with young children and a lot of luggage. A songthaew is open-backed benches with your bags between your feet, on a road with hairpins. Two adults, two small children, three suitcases and a pram is not a songthaew journey.

An early or tight ferry connection. Songthaews leave when they are ready, take the passengers they find, and stop for them. If you are working back from a fixed departure, a vehicle that leaves at the time you name removes the only variable you control. See Getting to Koh Chang for the sailing times you are working back from.

Day trips to the east coast or the waterfalls. With the shared service to Salak Phet either infrequent or discontinued depending on whose table you read, a chartered vehicle that waits for you is often the only way to do the east coast and get back the same day.

After dark. Once the scheduled runs finish around 17:00, everything is charter anyway. You may as well arrange it in advance at a price you agreed in daylight.

On the island, "private car" usually means chartering a songthaew for the whole vehicle rather than per head. No local source publishes a full-day or half-day charter rate between named west coast beaches — the 1,000 THB east coast figure above is the only published whole-vehicle number on the island, and it covers the longest and least-served route, so treat it as a ceiling rather than a going rate. Ask two or three drivers, expect to negotiate, and agree the number in baht before the vehicle moves. If what you want is a pier pickup, agree that with your resort in advance instead.

Self-drive is the other option: tour agents rent automatic cars and jeeps at roughly 1,000–1,200 THB per 24 hours, which is single-sourced and worth checking on the ground. It solves the luggage and the rain, but it puts you on the same two hills in a vehicle you have not driven before, and Thai road rules and overtaking habits apply.

One distinction worth keeping straight if you are also booking a road transfer from Bangkok: it ends at the mainland ferry pier. The crossing and the leg from Ao Sapparot to your beach are separate arrangements of your own, priced from the songthaew fares and the charter notes above.

Keep reading

• Arriving with children, luggage or a fixed sailing to make? Book a fixed-price transfer to the mainland ferry pier and sort the island leg on arrival.

Last updated: 2026-08-29. Ferry and pier notes come from Smile Taxi Service drivers running Bangkok-Trat transfers.