Island hopping was my image of what Southern Thailand is all about. On my first day in Krabi I went on snorkelling boat tour that took me to four islands. If you haven’t got much time to spend around Krabi area, I highly recommend doing this snorkelling boat tour to get the most out of island hopping.
On the night I arrived, I ran into some backpackers and decided to do a private snorkelling boat tour with them. Unfortunately, living out in Krabi town, we were a little far from the boat rentals in Ao Nang and even though we arrived early in the morning at 9am to rent a boat for the day, it was all sold out.
Since pictures speak louder than words, I’ll give you a glimpse at what the tours are like in video.
Price comparison for Private VS. Non-private Snorkelling boat tours
Doing a private snorkelling boat tour is actually cheaper than taking a non-private tour if you gather enough people to do it with you. Private boat tours are about 8000 baht (350AUD or 250 USD) We had managed to round up 10 people with us, so it would have only been an incredibly cheap 800 baht (35 AUD or 25 USD) per person for the boat, national park fare and snorkel gear.
If you don’t have enough people or miss out because you weren’t early enough like me, the 4 Islands boat tour I did is not a bad option. The tour was 1400 baht (60 AUD or 45 USD). Do note that this price included buffet lunch and transport back to the hostel which is not included in a private tour. Depending on whether you’ve prepared your own lunch already/ found cheap transport it would change how much you would need to budget in overall for a day out snorkelling.
To get the best buck for your money whichever option you choose, knowing how to barter down the price will help your budget. Watching us hesitate about paying almost double the price of this tour, the staff at the booth relented and said they’d sell it to us for 1000 baht instead (45 AUD or 30 USD).
For this particular tour in 2019 at least, it turns out that this is likely meant to be the usual price of the tour, other people we met on the boat also said they only paid 1000 baht for the boat! So if you do decide to do one of these boat tours too make sure you negotiate with them!
But of course if price is a concern for you in your travels, I have some more backpacker budget friendly reccomendations on what you can do around Krabi here.
This non-private boat tour was an unforgettable experience. If you’ve never done a snorkelling boat tour before, I do highly recommend it. However, in the future if I were to return to Southern Thailand for some snorkelling, I would prefer to wake up early for a private tour and sail somewhere with less tourists.