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Not much has changed on Thailand’s third largest island ever since the pandemic largely ended the steady development that defined the 2010s. Perhaps the most favorable update for travelers came in 2024, when members of the fishing community in Chek Bae, a village in Ko Chang’s remote southeast near Salak Phet Bay, launched a boat service to make the nearby islands more easily accessible.
A private boat trip combined with an overland journey through one of Ko Chang’s most scenic areas makes for a terrific outing. These trips also serve as a welcome break from the more touristy west coast. Some of the beaches on the small and minimally inhabited islands to the south of Ko Chang reach the brilliant category, even if most of the resorts overlooking them are no longer operating.
The cluster that I refer to as the “Ko Chang belt” encompasses 10 small islands and a bunch of islets situated within seven km of Ko Chang’s southern coasts, and roughly the same distance north of the Ko Mak and Ko Rang island groups. If you can imagine the entire Ko Chang Archipelago as a human figurine, you might1 see how the term “belt” makes sense as a west-to-east geographical indicator.
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