Bangrak Beach at Sunrise, Noon and Sunset

Bangrak Beach is not the best beach on Koh Samui and we have said so elsewhere. Shallow, silty underfoot, rocks you cannot see, and not somewhere to plan a swimming holiday around.

That is a verdict on it as a swimming beach. As a place to be, it changes character three times a day, and one of those versions is the best hour on this coast.

Sunrise

This is the one.

Bangrak faces north across a wide bay towards Koh Phangan, which puts the sunrise almost directly in front of you rather than behind a headland. Between about half past five and seven, depending on the season, the light comes up behind the islands on the horizon.

The water is at its flattest of the day. Wind on this coast builds through the morning and dies overnight, so at dawn the bay is often mirror-still, with the whole eastern sky in it.

You will share it with very few people. A handful of joggers, someone doing tai chi, fishermen bringing boats in, and the first staff opening up along the beach road. That is usually the entire population of the beach.

The walk end to end is about twenty-five minutes and there is no better time to do it. The sand is firm from the tide, the temperature is genuinely pleasant for the only time in the day, and the Big Buddha catches the first light on the headland at the northern end.

If you are jet lagged and awake at five anyway, this is what to do with it. It is the single best thing about being up at an inconvenient hour here, and it is free.

Noon

Honest answer: not much.

The middle of the day is hot, the light is flat and directly overhead, and the beach is exposed with very little natural shade. Between about eleven and three there is not a compelling reason to be on the sand here rather than under a fan somewhere.

The water does not compensate the way it would on a better beach. It is shallow a long way out, warm rather than refreshing, and the seabed is soft.

What the middle of the day is good for is the beachfront restaurants, which have shade, and the cafes, which have air conditioning. Bangrak in the afternoon is an indoor proposition and there is no shame in treating it that way.

If you want a swimming beach in the middle of the day, Choeng Mon is ten minutes east and is genuinely good.

Late afternoon

The beach comes back at about four.

The heat drops, the light lengthens, and the bay picks up a breeze that makes sitting outside pleasant again. This is when the beachfront places start filling up and when a walk becomes appealing for the second time.

It is also when the planes are most visible. Flights come in low over the water on their approach to the airport a few minutes away, close enough to read the airline, and on a clear evening they pass every few minutes.

Sunset

Here is the thing nobody tells you: Bangrak does not have a sunset.

The bay faces north. The sun goes down behind the island, over your shoulder and behind the hills. You get a very pretty afterglow on the water and on the Big Buddha, but you do not get the sun sinking into the sea.

For that you want the west coast. Nathon, Lipa Noi, or Bang Por on the north-west, all of which are twenty to forty minutes away.

What Bangrak gets instead is the reverse: the sky opposite the sunset going pink and gold over Koh Phangan while the bay flattens out again. It is genuinely lovely and it is not what people think they are booking when they book a beachfront table for sunset here.

The restaurants along the strip are still worth booking for that hour. Sabienglae in particular fills up. Just know what you are looking at.

After dark

The beach empties quickly. It gets dark between about half past six and seven, depending on the season, near the equator, without much of a dusk.

There is no lighting on the sand and there are rocks, so walking it at night is not a good idea. The beach road is fine.

Most of the strip closes between six and ten depending on what it is. By eleven Bangrak is quiet.

The short version

Set an alarm once. Walk the beach at six. It is the version of Bangrak that justifies the area, and it takes twenty-five minutes.

The rest of the day, treat the beach as scenery rather than a destination, eat well, and go to Choeng Mon if you want to swim.

Where we fit

We are on the beach road, roughly in the middle of the bay, with the Big Buddha visible up to the north.

Chillom is a licensed medical cannabis dispensary with a cafe and lounge attached, open from ten in the morning until two the following morning. We are not open at sunrise, which we recognise is the hour we have just spent this article recommending.

We are, however, open for all of the afternoon that the beach is too hot for, and for the entire evening after the rest of the strip has closed.