Everything we found — deliberately more than we can use
Phang Nga, Thailand · from Klong Muang, Krabi · 7–9 August 2026
Three families, one night — maybe two, based at Blue Bay Resort on Loh Paret, the west coast. This is the working sheet, not a brochure: the boat times that decide the weekend, when the water is actually swimmable, and a menu of options deliberately longer than we can use. Nothing here has been visited yet. Every place links to Google Maps; every phone number is tappable.
Newest star first. Tap a name to reopen its card, or ✕ to drop it. Starred places also get a coral ring on the map. This lives in this browser only — it isn't shared with anyone else on the trip, and it won't survive a cleared cache.
Every pin is a verified Google coordinate, resolved place-by-place through the Places API and checked 8 Aug 2026 — not inferred from prose the way the first version of this map was. That earlier version had the whole island sitting about 6 km too far north; Blue Bay alone was out by that much. These are navigable. Tap a pin for the card, or use a card's Google Maps link to drive.
14:00
Nopparat Thara (Ao Nang) → Chong Lard pier. ~40 min, direct, no transfer. 650 THB adult / 500 child. Pier is ~20–25 min from The Pelican; then ~30–35 min across the island to Blue Bay. Arrive ~15:20, straight into the best water of the trip.
Next one is 16:00 and lands you near dark. Cheaper option — Tha Len → Chong Lard, ~370–400 THB — runs only ~8 crossings a week in Jun–Sep, so call first.
15:30
Klong Hia pier → Nopparat Thara. ~50 min, 650 / 500. This is the last boat to the mainland. Nothing in the evening. Klong Hia is ~30–35 min from the resort.
Leave Blue Bay by 14:15
Earlier: 09:00 Chong Lard → Nopparat Thara · 14:00 Chong Lard → Tha Len. Missed it? 20 THB longtail Chong Lard → Koh Yao Noi, then out on their schedule.
⚠️ Live weather advisory, 5–11 AugustThai Met Dept: upper Andaman waves 2–4 m, above 4 m in thundershowers, and small boats to keep ashore. Our crossing is inside Phang Nga Bay on ~30-passenger speedboats, so it's far calmer than those open-sea numbers — but cancellation is possible both ways, and every island-hopping and snorkel longtail should be assumed off. Decide in advance what a cancelled Saturday boat means: extra night, or rough ride.
Ratings caveat — please read before trusting a numberGoogle Maps could not be retrieved during research. Every rating here is from a named alternative platform — TripAdvisor, Trip.com, Booking, HappyCow — and labelled as such. Nothing is invented; anything unverifiable says so. Review counts are thin across this whole island, so a 5.0★ from 7 reviews is a rumour, not a fact. Spot-check on your phone whatever you actually commit to.
| Day | Swim windows at Loh Paret | Low tide (for the sandbar) |
|---|---|---|
| Fri 7 | 15:00 – 18:45 — best block of the trip, and it's the one we arrive in | 11:11 |
| Sat 8 | 06:30 – 10:30 · 16:30 – 19:00 (runs into sunset) | 13:07 |
| Sun 9 | 06:30 – 10:30 — best water of the whole weekend | 14:28 |
The good news: Loh Paret is one of only two beaches on this island that still swims at low tide, so the tide mostly stops mattering — unlike Koh Yao Noi, where the whole plan had to bend around it. Neap weekend, so low water bottoms at 0.7–0.9 m, not mudflat. Sunrise 06:18, sunset 18:44. Two tide sources disagree by ~45 min — treat times as ±45 min. Laem Haad's sandbar needs the low tide in column three. And both prime swim blocks end at dusk on a west-facing beach where everyone gathers for sunset — repellent on the kids by 17:30, every day.
| mangsawirat มังสวิรัติ | Vegetarian. | |
| jay เจ | Vegan / no pungent. Stricter, and widely understood. | |
| mai sai nam pla, mai sai kapi, mai sai gung haeng | No fish sauce, no shrimp paste, no dried shrimp. This is the sentence that matters. Add mai sai kai (no egg) and mai sai nam man hoi (no oyster sauce). |
The village kitchens here are Muslim-Thai halal, so there's no pork — but they lean hard on fish sauce, shrimp paste and dried shrimp, including in the dishes labelled as vegetables. With the phrases above you'll reliably get pad pak, pad thai with tofu, green or massaman curry with tofu, khao pad and crispy tofu. There is no fully vegetarian kitchen anywhere on Koh Yao Yai — HappyCow has zero listings for the island, which is a real downgrade from Koh Yao Noi. Worth knowing before we're hungry with six kids.
Feeding twelve people is the real constraint, not the ratingsSeating capacity is unverified at every non-resort place on this island, and one source says outright that Koh Yao Yai has “limited restaurant options outside hotels, making meal planning essential.” Blue Bay and the Santhiya venues are the only places we can be confident absorb twelve without a wait. For anything local, call in the morning for the evening. The failure mode is specific: one cook, twelve orders, ninety minutes, six unhappy children.