Thailand: Riding a scooter on Ko Samet

Ko Samet is a relatively small island off the east coast off Thailand. It takes about 4-5 hours to get here from Bangkok. Large part of the island is a National Park with some of the accommodations are inside the national park. Everyone entering the National Park must pay a 200 Bath/person entry fee. This is a fee that has to be paid only once. The roads inside the national park are in a terrible condition so expect a bumpy ride with the taxi 🙂

Riding a scooter is one of the most popular transportation method on the island. Virtually everyone is riding a scooter here from the 10 year old kids to the 80 year old grandmas. It is not uncommon to see 3-4 persons on the same bike. I am not sure if anyone here has a drivers licence 🙂
We have only seen trucks and scooters absolutely no cars which is understandable as there is no room for parking. Most of the trucks are taxis and they work on fixed price ( which is displayed at the Nadan pier pickup point ) unfortunately there is no room for haggling here.

You can rent a scooter for about 250 Bath / day or 100 Bath / hour . The roads outside of the National Park are in a better condition so try your biking skills there as there are only dirt roads inside the National Park. During the monsoon season these roads are in a terrible condition several pot holes and bumps makes it an unforgettable experience to drive here 😀 Most of the scooters for rent are around 120cc which you will obviously need on these roads. Don’t worry about not having a motorbike license nobody actually cares about this as well as nobody cares about the rules of the road either. We have seen very few traffic signs on the island, the most notable one is the “No Entry” sign near the ferry port.. needless to say everyone was riding straight through it 😀

To summarize this: It is a lot of fun to drive a scooter on Ko Samet but you need to be very careful with the locals driving on the same road as they don’t tend to realise that others are also part of the traffic 😀