Koh Tao Travel Guide

Yes, especially if you want to learn to dive or snorkel. The water around Koh Tao is warm, usually calm from February to September, and full of life close to shore, with turtles and blacktip reef sharks seen in the bays. Learning here costs a fraction of what it does in most of the world, and the whole island is set up for it, from the dive boats leaving at dawn to the sunset beers on Sairee afterward.

It isn't a long-beach island. Sairee is the one big stretch of sand, and the rest are small coves you reach down steep roads or by boat. The island is busy and built up along the west coast, and if you want resort pools and a choice of long swimming beaches, Koh Samui does that better.

Koh Tao or Koh Samui? Koh Samui for comfort, families and big hotels. Koh Tao for diving, snorkeling and a younger, more social crowd. Many people do both, since the boat between them takes under two hours.

An Open Water course, the first full certification, takes three to four days and costs about ฿11,000–12,500, depending on the school and whether it's PADI or SSI. Ban's Diving Resort charges ฿11,000 for its PADI course with discounted rooms, and Crystal Dive ฿12,500 for SSI with four nights' accommodation included. An Advanced course costs about ฿10,000–12,000 more. The price differences between schools are small, so choose on class size, reviews and how you get on with the instructors.

If you're not sure diving is for you, a try dive is a single day with an instructor to a maximum of 12 m, with no certification. Certified divers pay about ฿800–1,200 a dive, less in packs.

The island has more than 25 dive sites. The training sites like Japanese Gardens and Twins are shallow and sheltered. The deeper pinnacles, Chumphon Pinnacle and Sail Rock, both down to about 45 m, are the big days out, and they're where whale sharks turn up. There's no fixed season for them, and most sightings are reported between about February and September.

If you only do one organized trip, make it a round-the-island snorkeling day. Most of Koh Tao's best snorkeling is in bays that are a long, steep ride apart or have no road at all, and a boat takes you to five of them in a day, with lunch on board, the masks and fins, and the Koh Nang Yuan fee.

Four nights suits most people who aren't diving. That gives you a day for Koh Nang Yuan and Sairee, a day for the snorkeling trip around the island, a day for the south coast with Shark Bay, Freedom Beach and the John-Suwan viewpoint, and a spare day for weather or doing nothing.

If you're taking the Open Water course, add four days for it, and a day or two after to fun dive or rest before you fly. Many people who come for a course stay for weeks.

From Bangkok, the simplest way is Lomprayah's combined ticket, a night bus from Khao San Road and the catamaran from Chumphon, arriving at 08:45 for ฿1,250, or ฿850 with the slow ferry. A sleeper train to Chumphon plus the boat costs about ฿1,630, and you can also fly to Chumphon at 07:25 and reach Koh Tao by 15:00. My Bangkok to Koh Tao guide has every option.

From Koh Samui, fast boats take 1.5 to 2 hours and cost ฿700, and slow ferries take up to three for ฿450–550. From Koh Phangan it's about an hour. Every boat docks at Mae Haad pier on the west coast.

The west coast between Mae Haad and Sairee is walkable. For anything further, pickup-truck taxis wait at the pier and in Sairee, about ฿100 a person for the short hop from Mae Haad to Sairee when they're shared, more for the east-coast bays. Taxi boats are often the easier way to the far bays, about ฿150–200 from Mae Haad to Tanote.

Scooters cost about ฿200–300 a day, but Koh Tao's roads are very steep concrete, with sand and gravel on the turns, and the tracks down to the east-coast bays are rougher still. If you haven't ridden much, use taxis. Tap water isn't safe to drink, so buy bottled or refill.

Koh Tao is on the Gulf side, so its seasons run differently from Phuket and Krabi. February to September is the best time, with calm seas and the clearest water for diving, and February is the driest month, with about 64 mm of rain at the Koh Samui weather station. July and August are busy with the European summer holidays, with about 100–120 mm of rain a month, a third of the monsoon's.

October to December is the monsoon here. November is the wettest month, with about 445 mm, the boats can be rough or canceled, and dive visibility drops. Courses still run, but it's the worst time to plan a diving trip around.