First, let me say that I’ve been to Thailand a lot and am quite familiar with it, but the itinerary has always been a little different and I often had a lot of time of my hands. Something I haven’t done that much is spend most of my time in Bangkok and taking shorter trips to islands/beaches. I’ve been to many of the southern islands (Koh Tao, Phangan, Samui, Krabi etc.), and a couple times to Koh Samet. But the travelling is always time consuming, even to Koh Samet where the transport can be (or at least was last time) unreliable. My plan is to stay in Bangkok for 1-2 weeks, and during that time I’d like to take a short trip to an island or beach (preferably island) but not spend as much time on the trips. The closest to Bangkok I’ve been before is Samet, which was fun but the trip was over 4 hours each way.
Any tips, emphasis on quickly getting to an island destination and back to BKK? I don’t want small trips to take up a huge chunk of my trip overall. If the trip is comfortable and easy, that helps. Last time I used a public bus to Samet that was very easy and comfortable, but couldn’t manage to get a return trip so I had to resort to a minivan that was extremely slow and uncomfortable. I’ve used most of the ways of transport there is, overnight train, bus, minivan (no thanks), flight, and as long as it’s easy and comfortable I don’t mind the time **as** much (I don’t want to fly though because of the cost). But I haven’t been for a while and haven’t kept up with the latest options.
If there’s a lesser known island location relatively close to Bangkok I’d love to hear about it!
TL;DR: looking for quick and easy, possibly lesser known ways of getting to islands from Bangkok.
