Given Khao Lak’s location, it’s within easy day trip distance of a number of places including the Khao Sok National Park, Phuket, Phang Nga Bay and even over to Krabi. We’ve covered all of the trips we experienced in our Youtube series but we’ve provided an overview of these below as well as some more we didn’t have time for.
Bamboo Rafting
These excursions basically get you out on the rivers or lakes around Khao Lak, on a basic bamboo raft to enjoy the scenery and hopefully spot some wildlife. Khao Lak is surrounded by jungle and waterways so there’s loads of opportunities to enjoy this here and it was high on our list for our trip. We enjoyed a brilliant excursion booked on Get Your Guide but with Love Khaolak Holiday for around £126 for the 4 of us, see here: https://gyg.me/2dSxw5BZ. Our excursion included a trip to Khao Lak Turtle Sanctuary and a waterfall and we’ve done a full review video below.
Little Amazon
Similar to bamboo rafting in that you have the opportunity to get out on the waterways around Khao Lak. These excursions generally involve canoeing through the mangroves in the area known as the Little Amazon. This gives you the opportunity to spot wildlife in the trees above – monkeys, snakes, lizards etc. This one was high on our list but decided it was too similar to the bamboo rafting excursion so opted just to do one this time.
Takua Pa
A small town 30 minutes north of Khao Lak, with a strong Chinese community. The old town has beautiful old houses, shrines and temples and has a famous Sunday market. We considered getting a taxi here for the afternoon and exploring ourselves (but ran out of time), or there are guided excursions available.
Similan and Surin Islands
These islands sit a few hours west off the coast of Khao Lak and offer some amazing snorkelling and diving opportunities. They are billed as almost a must-do and one of the top things to do in the area. The tours though do all seem to focus heavily on snorkelling or diving and are long days. For us, travelling with young kids, we weren’t sure how much the kids would buy into snorkelling and it was a long day if they didn’t. We also read reviews saying the journey over and back can be a bit choppy. Given this we decided to give it a miss although Greg in particular would love to return one day and give it a try.
Samet Nangshe Viewpoint and Skywalk
This viewpoint is billed as one of the best views in the whole of Thailand, looking out over Phang Nga bay. Its sometimes combined with James Bond Island and Phang Nga Bay excursions (see below) but not always. We made sure our excursion included this as we didn’t want to miss it and it was truly incredible. If you don’t want to take up a full day and combined excursion you can book a standalone excursion or even just take a taxi. There are a couple of options on site – just the basic view like we enjoyed, or there is also now a glass skywalk that you can enjoy for an extra fee. To get up the hill you can walk, but we’d recommend paying the small fee for the tuk tuk ride to the top where theres a lovely café and balcony overlooking the bay. Make sure to take in this view if you can!
‘Extreme’ Activities
If you want to be even more adventurous there are activities like white water rafting, ziplining, ATV tours and off-road jeep tours. We didn’t look into these as we’ve experience white water rafting and ziplining in the past few years (and loved them) and didn’t fancy ATVs or jeeps on this occasion. However they’re a great way to get out into the jungle and see the country.
Phuket
A catch all for the area of Phuket a couple of hours south of Khao Lak. There’s loads to do in Phuket which is obviously a destination in itself. We did look into getting a taxi down here for the day but couldn’t squeeze it in, or there are various excursions you can take. Highlights that caught our attention were the Phuket Elephant Sanctuary, ziplining and go karting at Hanuman World and shopping at the Central Phuket mall. As well as these there’s countless beaches, waterfalls, the big Buddah, Phuket aquarium, night markets, the beautiful old town and Andamanda Phuket waterpark. So all in all masses of fun family activities!
Phi Phi Islands
These islands sit within Phang Nga bay, closer to Krabi, so are best visited from here, but are reachable on a day trip from Khao Lak. Day trips tend to offer a series of stops at different islands, usually offering some snorkelling, in addition to stops at monkey beach and Maya Bay (where the movie ‘The Beach’ was filmed). These islands are iconic and we particularly wanted to visit monkey beach and Maya Bay, and with the snorkelling seemingly a little lower key, we decided to go for it. These are long days given the distance from Khao Lak, with our pickup at 7am and drop off at around 6.30pm, it was nearly a 12 hour day – this was something we selected carefully when picking our tour as they all offer varying start times. Our tour was booked through Get Your Guide with V Marine tours, who were excellent, for £370 for the 4 of us. See here for our tour: https://gyg.me/6Wb8fjLy
Broadly our day unfolded as follows:
1.5 hour mini bus to Phuket marina
1 hour speedboat over to the islands (very choppy due to the weather!)
1.5 hours at Bamboo Island to enjoy the beach and snorkel off the beach – this was amazing with so many fish in the water!
Speedboat over to Phi Phi Don where we stopped a little offshore over a coral reef and could snorkel over the reef. This was amazing, felt perfectly safe and the kids loved it – not at all as scary as we thought it would be!
Headed ashore for lunch at the Holiday Inn by the beach for around an hour. Access to buffet lunch (catered for gluten free and vegetarian), swimming pool and toilets.
Speedboat over to monkey beach – only spent around 10 minutes here – it was very busy but saw plenty of monkeys before moving on.
Speedboat over to Phi Phi Lee. There are 3 stops here – the first is a sail by view of the viking caves and the second was a stop at Pi Leh Bay. This is a sheltered lagoon with giant rocks and crystal clear blue water. Its incredibly beautiful and while it is very busy we had a wonderful time swimming here for around 25 minutes, jumping in off the boat.
The third stop on the island was for Maya Bay where we had around 40 minutes of free time to explore. This was by far the busiest site of the day, and absolutely crammed with tourists. The bay itself is protected so you can’t enter the water, and due to the volume of people its not a relaxing beach experience. For this reason, while it is incredibly beautiful, it was a little disappointing and we spent most of our time enjoying a snack from the barbecue. There were toilets also on site.
1 hour speedboat back to Phuket
1.5 hour minibus back to Khao Lak
Overall it was a wonderful day, although long and hot and the water was very choppy so be prepared with your anti-seasickness medicine.
James Bond Island and Phang Nga Bay
One of the most popular day trips from Khao Lak is to explore the upper part of Phang Nga bay and to visit James Bond island – the island in the Bay where the Man With the Golden Gun was filmed. Again there are many different combinations and variations to this excursion. We struggled to find one that was just right and included the Samet Nangshe viewpoint so in the end we followed some recommendations and contacted tour operator Ku Khaolak. They are a local tour operator but who aren’t for sale on Viator or Get Your Guide. They do offer standard day trips to a variety of places but we contacted them to arrange a bespoke private tour. Our day came to a total of 9,500 baht or around £220 which was incredible value. For this our day looked something like:
Pick up at 8am – 1.5 hour drive to the bay
Sailed on a private longtail boat through the mangroves and caves to James Bond Island for around 40 minutes
James Bond Island – approximately 20 minutes guided tour of the island. This was busy but fun and we saw the main sights.
Short longtail boat ride to the next island where we boarded canoes for a guided paddle around the island (approx. 20-30 minutes) and through the sea caves. Some of these were very low so we had to lie down but the caves and scenery was amazing – plus we saw monkeys!
Short longtail boar ride to Koh Panyi. This is a fascinating island on stilts, or known as the floating village. It famously has a floating football pitch (but bring your own ball as found there wasn’t one!) and you can explore the mini floating town, the markets and school and we finished with a buffet lunch at Andaman Seafood which was delicious and again was great for allergies and vegetarians. We spent about 1.5 hours on the island in total before sailing back.
15 minute drive to Sewankhuha temple, famous for its massive golden statue and monkeys that live outside. We enjoyed a guided tour and spotted plenty of monkeys outside which was incredible.
40 minute drive to Samet Nangshe (see above). We spent around 40 minutes here before our drive back to Khao Lak (just under an hour) for 5pm.
This was a fantastic day all round – and no seasickness issues this time! Our tour guide was superb, we were well taken care of all day and would thoroughly recommend Ku Khaolak. Our full review of the excursion is shown below:
Khao Sok National Park
The national park consists of the oldest rainforest in the world, as well as the beautiful Cheow Larn Lake. Its also one of the best places in the area to view wild animals like elephants, bears, monkeys and snakes. If you prefer a longer stay you can stay at Elephant Hills and enjoy glamping in the jungle, and sleeping on a floating tent on the lake. We decided against this but still wanted to enjoy a day here to see the beautiful scenery and hopefully spot some wild elephants. Again, there are different variations to these tours with different viewpoints, hikes, time on the lake etc. We opted for a tour through Get Your Guide (see here: https://gyg.me/k4B1Efpd ) with operator Love Khaolak Holiday (the same as our Bamboo rafting excursion). This came to around £270 for the 4 of us and was labelled as Khao Sok & Cheow Lan Lake Tour with Kayaking. The national park and lake are undoubtedly beautiful but unfortunately our day didn’t quite go as we’d expected:
Pick up at 8am in shared minibus. Journey took around 3 hours but included a toilet break at a coffee shop, a stop at a 7-Eleven for snacks, and a stop at the scenic viewpoint at the Rajjaprabha Dam. Our guide was lovely, telling us all about Thailand and offering free drinks along the way.
Approximately 1 hour scenic longtail boat ride across the lake and stopping at scenic viewpoints and photo ops along the way. Be warned our boat wasn’t fully covered so in the midday sun this wasn’t great.
This is where our tour diverged from the schedule. We were supposed to then spend 2 hours 45 minutes at the lakehouse including 1 hour for lunch with the rest of the time for kayaking and swimming. This was then to be followed by an 80 minute wildlife viewing boatride. However the tour company paired us with another group who were doing a guided hike and so we had to wait for them to return before we could leave the lakehouse. In the end we were here for 5 hours with just a cursory 30 minute cruise down the lakeshore trying to spot elephants (which we didn’t unfortunately). The food was great and we were well taken care of, we had unlimited access to the kayaks and swimming in the lake, but 5 hours was excessive and we were pretty hot, tired, frustrated and bored by the time we left. It was a shame as our guide was lovely and tried his best but it was incorrectly scheduled and just wasn’t quite what we’d booked.
We left the raft house at 5pm by longtail boat and were back on the road by 6pm, arriving back at the hotel by 8pm. The tour had been advertised as an 8 hour tour, but had turned into a 12 hour day.
In the end obviously we were frustrated the day hadn’t gone as we’d have liked, although Khao Sok National Park was incredibly beautiful and we’d recommend a visit here to anyone. Our full review of the excursion is here.
