Getting to Koh Chang: Piers, Ferries and Real Travel Times

At a glance

USD figures throughout this guide use a rate of roughly 33 THB to the dollar.

The journey is three separate arrangements, not one ticket

Nobody sells you a single ticket from Bangkok to your hotel on Koh Chang. What looks like one journey is three, and each is arranged and paid for separately:

1. Bangkok to the mainland ferry pier at Trat. Around 310 to 320 kilometres, most of it on decent highway. A private car does it in 4 to 4.5 hours in normal traffic; buses take 5 to 6 hours because they stop. Plan against 5 hours from central Bangkok whatever you take. The variance is almost all in the Chonburi stretch at the start, and no published source puts a number on how much it adds at a given departure hour, so the extra half-hour is a margin rather than a measured figure.
2. The ferry. About 30 minutes on the water. Bought at the pier ticket office on the day, in cash.
3. The island leg. Ao Sapparot pier to your beach. Typically 20 to 45 minutes depending on how far south you are going, by shared songthaew or by prior arrangement with your hotel. Shared songthaews stop around 17:00, so on a late boat that arrangement with the hotel is not optional — see the warning below.

A transfer quoted from Bangkok gets you to the pier, not to your room. Any operator quoting a single door-to-beach price is either including a ferry ticket they cannot pre-book or arranging the island leg on your behalf as a second service. Read the quote before you assume otherwise.

One mainland pier is running, not two, and it lands you on the north-east coast

For years Koh Chang had two competing mainland piers a few kilometres apart: Ao Thammachat and Centrepoint. That is no longer the position. Centrepoint's ferry stopped in mid-2024 and has not resumed. It had already been sold and shut once in September 2022, restarted in April 2023 under the name Trat Ferry Company with a thin timetable, and stopped again. As of August 2026 no reopening has been announced.

So there is one route:

Ao Thammachat (mainland, Laem Ngop district, Trat) → Ao Sapparot (Koh Chang, north-east coast).

A large amount of Koh Chang material still online describes Centrepoint as an operating alternative, including at least one well-maintained island guide showing a recent update date. If a booking confirmation, a hotel email or a driver mentions Centrepoint, treat it as shorthand for "the Trat pier area" rather than a live choice, and confirm that Ao Thammachat is the actual drop-off. The fares quoted further down this page are written as "Laem Ngop / Centrepoint, Trat" for that reason — it names the pier district, not two options.

Where the pier is. Ao Thammachat sits about 9 to 10 km along the coast road from Laem Ngop town and roughly 17 to 20 km from Trat Airport. It is not in Trat town, and it is not walkable from anywhere. Any bus that terminates at Trat bus station has left you about 25 km short.

Where you land. Ao Sapparot is on the north-east corner of the island. Every developed beach is on the west coast, so arriving means turning left and driving down the west coast road. White Sand Beach is the first you reach; Bang Bao at the south-western end is the last, and adds the better part of an hour. Which beach you have booked therefore changes your arrival time materially — see which Koh Chang beach is right for you.

Frequency. Thirteen sailings are scheduled each way, identical in both directions:

06:30 · 07:45 · 08:45 · 09:45 · 10:45 · 11:45 · 12:45 · 13:45 · 14:45 · 15:45 · 16:45 · 17:45 · 18:30

Treat the middle of that list as indicative rather than fixed. Following a fuel conservation order reported from April 2026, boats other than the first and last are said to depart only when full. In practice that means departures every 20 to 30 minutes when the pier is busy and a longer wait off-season, when you may sit on the boat while it fills. The 06:30 and the 18:30 are the two that go regardless.

What is at the piers. Assume very little and arrive supplied. Nothing published describes what Ao Thammachat or Ao Sapparot actually have — shade, seating, toilets, hot food, luggage storage, an ATM, or whether you are allowed to sit in your vehicle while it queues. Since a wait of up to an hour is normal and the middle sailings go when they fill rather than on the clock, draw cash before you leave Trat or Laem Ngop, because the ticket window is cash-only and no cash machine is confirmed at either end, and carry water and whatever children will need for that hour.

06:30 and 18:30 are the two numbers that decide your trip

The first ferry of the day leaves at 06:30 and the last leaves at 18:30, in both directions. There is no night service, no late boat in high season, and no scheduled passenger alternative. This single pair of times is the constraint that everything else on your itinerary has to fit around.

Work backwards from it. To make the 18:30 out of Ao Thammachat you want to be at the pier by 18:00, which means leaving central Bangkok by about 12:30 by car and considerably earlier by bus. To make a flight home from Bangkok you need to reverse the whole thing: an 18:30 boat off the island puts you at Suvarnabhumi around 23:30 at best, so anything before a mid-morning flight the next day means an overnight on the mainland or a very early ferry.

Working that cut-off back through the timetable gives you the sailing you actually want. The 15:45 is the last departure that reliably lands you while shared transport is still running. The 16:45 is marginal: it gets in around 17:20, inside one source's 17:45 and past the other's 17:00. The 17:45 and the 18:30 need a pickup booked in advance, and so does the 16:45 unless you are willing to bet on which of the two published cut-offs is the right one.

If you miss the last boat, you sleep on the mainland. That is the whole of it. Your options, in descending order of sense:

• Laem Ngop, the small town nearest the pier. A handful of guesthouses, quiet, and about 15 minutes from Ao Thammachat for the 06:30. This is the right choice if you arrive late and are trying to be on the island for breakfast.
• Trat town, roughly 25 to 30 km from the pier. Considerably more accommodation, food after dark, an ATM on every corner, and a night market. Better if you are arriving with a family and want a real room and a real dinner rather than the closest bed.
• Turn round and drive back, which almost nobody should do. Trat to Bangkok is another 4 to 4.5 hours and you have gained nothing.

Ferries are not the fragile part of this journey. They run every day of the year with only very occasional cancellations for high waves, and the route runs to Koh Chang's sheltered eastern side. Full stoppages have happened once or twice in recent years and were measured in hours, not days. The window in which any suspension is even possible is the southwest monsoon, roughly late May to the end of October, with September the wettest month — that season is covered in Koh Chang by season.

Ferry tickets are cheap; the expensive decision is bringing a car across

Fares are per direction. There are no return tickets, so you buy again on the way back at the same price.

Fares appear to have risen around 10 to 11 April 2026 — passenger from 80 to 90 THB, car from roughly 100–120 to 200 THB, motorcycle from 40 to 90 THB. Two current, dated sources carry the new numbers and agree; several other well-known Koh Chang sites still publish the old ones. Carry a little more than you expect to need. Child fares are the one item nobody agrees on: one source lists children at the full 90 THB, another at free under 110 cm and 40 THB from 110 to 150 cm. Ask at the window rather than counting on either.

Why bringing a car changes the day. The 200 THB is not the point. The point is that vehicles queue and foot passengers do not. On a normal day the difference is 20 minutes; on a Thai public holiday, when the island fills, the vehicle line at Ao Thammachat is the reason people miss boats. Add to that two steep hill sections and no complete loop road on the island itself, so a wrong turn means retracing the whole way — getting around Koh Chang has both.

For most visitors the car is not worth it. A hire car is worth taking across if you are a family with a lot of luggage, if you are staying a week or more, or if you are booked somewhere remote on the east coast. Otherwise the island's shared songthaews cover the west coast perfectly adequately, at prices set out in getting around Koh Chang.

Trat Airport removes four hours of road, at a schedule you have to bend to

Bangkok Airways is the only airline serving Trat, and the airport is privately owned by them. All flights run to and from Bangkok Suvarnabhumi (BKK). There are no Don Mueang flights, no international arrivals, and no other domestic routes. Aircraft are 70-seat ATR 72 turboprops.

• Flight time: about 40 minutes airborne, timetabled at an hour.
• Frequency: three a day each way on the current low-season schedule. Sources disagree on high season, one giving four daily and one giving three, and one claiming a drop to two in the quietest months. Treat it as three to four, and check the actual date you want.
• Fare band, one way including taxes: from about 1,200 THB (about US$36) in low season. In high season it is hard to find under 2,500 THB (about US$76), and over the peak weeks it goes well past 4,000 THB (about US$121).
• Airport to the ferry pier: 17 to 20 km, 20 to 25 minutes by road. Airport minivans use the same Ao Thammachat crossing as everyone else.

The published summer schedule (29 March to 24 October 2026) runs BKK to Trat at 08:10, 11:40 and 16:15, returning at 09:45, 13:10 and 17:45. High-season times shift the middle flight later.

Two practical consequences. First, the 16:15 arrival lands at 17:15 and leaves you 20 to 25 minutes from the pier — tight but usually workable for the 18:30, which means booking a resort pier pickup at the same time as the flight, because that boat gets in after the last songthaew. The 17:45 departure is the problem in the other direction: it means an early-afternoon ferry off the island. Second, because everything routes through Suvarnabhumi, flying makes sense if you are already arriving there internationally and can connect. If you land at Don Mueang, flying to Trat means crossing Bangkok to the other airport first, which erases most of the saving.

Published prices for the onward leg from Trat Airport do not agree with each other. A shared songthaew or pick-up from the baggage-claim exit is quoted around 280 THB (about US$8.50) per person including the ferry ticket. Shared minibuses to your resort are quoted anywhere from 650 to 1,000 THB (about US$20 to US$30) per person by three different sources. Private cars run roughly 2,000 to 2,200 THB (about US$61 to US$67) for two, or 2,500 to 2,800 THB for a minibus seating four, usually described as including ferry tickets and delivery to the resort door, with a surcharge of around 200 THB for the far southern beaches. Test that door-to-door claim at the desk before you pay it: ferry tickets cannot be pre-booked and are sold for cash at the window on the day, so an "included" ticket is one the operator buys on your behalf when you get there, and the island leg is a second driver on the far side. None of those figures is confirmed, so agree the price before you get in. These are third-party airport products. The fixed fares further down this page are a different thing and end at the mainland pier.

So is flying worth it? The numbers to settle it are already on this page. Two people at peak fares are paying something past 4,000 THB each, plus 2,000 to 2,200 THB for the private car from the airport — roughly 10,000 THB in total, and a party of four pays four fares while the car price barely moves. A whole sedan from Suvarnabhumi to the pier is 3,700 THB regardless of how many of you are in it, and you add the ferry at about 90 THB a head and the island leg on top. Three hours saved does not repay that gap. In low season the arithmetic is close: two tickets at about 1,200 THB plus the airport car is about 4,400 to 4,600 THB against 3,700 THB plus the crossing and the island leg, and at that margin the three hours are worth buying. So fly if you are one or two people, travelling at low-season fares, already connecting airside at Suvarnabhumi and not carrying much. From three people up, or at any peak fare, take the car.

Ekkamai bus, through minivan or private car: what each gets you

The public bus is cheap and slow. Three operators run Bangkok's Ekkamai (Eastern) Bus Terminal to Trat: Transport Co. Ltd — the state "999" service — Cherdchai Tour in 1st class, and Koh Chang Bangkok Minibus in microbuses. Fares fall in a band of roughly 260 to 330 THB (about US$8 to US$10), and the two best Koh Chang sites disagree on every single operator's exact price, so buy at the counter rather than budgeting to the baht. Journey time is 5 to 6 hours, commonly over 6 for daytime services that stop at Chanthaburi.

The problem is the end of the journey. Most buses do not go to the ferry. They terminate at Trat bus terminal, or drop passengers at Saen Tung junction, from where a songthaew covers the last stretch to the pier for around 60 to 80 THB (about US$2 to US$2.50) per person. That is another 30 to 45 minutes and another negotiation, at the end of six hours on a bus, and it is the leg most likely to push a late-afternoon arrival past the 18:30 boat. The documented exception is the 999 departing Ekkamai at 07:45, which runs directly to Ao Thammachat pier.

Departures run through the day with a late or overnight service around 23:30. First and last times vary by source — first departure is given as either 05:00 or 06:00 and the last as anywhere between 17:30 and 23:30 — and whether the overnight Cherdchai bus runs daily or only on Fridays is disputed. Check on the day at the terminal.

Through minivans advertise Ekkamai to Koh Chang as a single service including the ferry, from about 450 THB up to 600 to 1,200 THB per person for door-to-door versions. These figures came only from search summaries rather than a verified operator page, so treat them as an indication. What you gain is not having to solve the Saen Tung problem yourself. What you give up is legroom, luggage space and any control over the departure time.

A private car is the same road at the same speed, with three differences that matter on this particular route: your departure time is yours, luggage is not rationed, and you are delivered to the pier rather than to a junction 25 km short of it. On a 4.5-hour drive with a fixed 18:30 deadline at the end, control over the departure time is the thing you are actually paying for.

Fixed fares, per vehicle rather than per person, one way, tolls included, to the mainland ferry pier at Laem Ngop / Centrepoint, Trat:

That is roughly US$91 to US$145 per vehicle depending on route and size — a van split four ways lands close to what four through-minivan seats cost, which is the comparison worth making rather than the headline number. These fares end at the pier. The ferry ticket and the island leg are yours to arrange, for the reason set out at the top of this chapter: neither can be pre-booked.

Realistic door-to-door times

Counting everything — immigration, the drive, waiting for a boat that may be waiting to fill, the crossing, and the west coast road at the far end.

The two airport rows already carry an hour for immigration and baggage, so take that hour back off if you are starting from a hotel in Bangkok rather than off a flight. Add 45 to 60 minutes if you are staying at Lonely Beach, Bailan or Bang Bao rather than at the northern end of the west coast. The lower end of each range assumes weekday traffic and a boat that is close to leaving; the upper end assumes neither. If your totals land you on a ferry that docks after about 17:00, the island-leg figure is a pickup you arranged before you left rather than a songthaew you find waiting, and nobody publishes what that costs.

Keep reading

• This is the first chapter of the guide.
• Fixed fares and vehicle sizes for the Bangkok, Don Mueang and Pattaya runs to the pier are on the booking page.

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