Ko Chang, which means Elephant Island in Thai, is the second largest island in Thailand and is located on the Eastern Seaboard, most of the way towards the Cambodian border. The island is part of a national park, but unlike Ko Samet, you do NOT have to pay a fee to enter the island. The fee on Ko Chang applies only to some of the inland areas and to the area with the main waterfall.
Comparisons with Ko Samet are inevitable. Ko Chang is similarly priced in terms of accommodation and restaurants. The infrastructure in Ko Chang is also similar with electricity being a problem at times and not all bungalows offering electricity running for 24 hours. If travelling by the most common form or bus, boat and then songtaew, the beaches at Ko Chang take about seven hours to get to from Bangkok, whereas the beaches on Ko Samet can be reached in four.
To get to Ko Chang from Bangkok, you need to take a bus around baht from the Eastern Ekamai bus station to Trat and this takes around 5 hours. From Trat, you take a songtaew 30 baht to the coast and from the coast, a boat 50 baht over to the island. Once you have landed on the island, songtaews 30 β 70 baht are waiting to take you to the beaches, the bulk of which are on the west coast.
So, the total cost to get to one of the beaches in Ko Chang is around baht. Note: The bus from Bangkok to Trat may drop you off on the main highway, before you reach Trat at a location from which you can get a songtaew straight to the coast, thus saving you a little time. There are several beaches on Ko Chang, most on the western side of the island. They are all ok, but in my opinion, none of the are as nice as the best beaches on Samet, Samui or Phuket.
That's not to say that they are not nice, more that the beaches elsewhere are really good. But, the beaches do have other things going for them. Due to its relatively isolated location, in so much that it really isn't that close to other popular tourist spots, Ko Chang does not suffer from the boatloads of day trippers that Ko Samet suffers from.
