The Quiet North-East: Bangrak, Plai Laem and Choeng Mon

Koh Samui's north-east corner is the part of the island most itineraries pass through rather than stop in. It sits between the airport and Chaweng, and the assumption is that there is nothing there.

There is a reasonable amount there. It is just quiet about it.

The geography

The corner runs roughly from Bangrak in the north, east around the headland at Plai Laem, and down to Choeng Mon before the road turns south towards Chaweng.

End to end it is about fifteen minutes by road. You can see all three areas in a morning and most people never see any of them.

Bangrak

The stretch below the Big Buddha, facing north across a wide flat bay towards Koh Phangan.

The beach is poor for swimming, shallow and silty with rocks underfoot, and good for walking, which is a different thing. The morning light here is the best on this coast and the bay is usually glassy before eight.

The food is better than the area's reputation. Sabienglae is one of the best Thai seafood restaurants on the island. There is proper coffee. And the airport is ten minutes away, which quietly makes this the most practical place to stay on Samui if your flights are awkward.

It closes early. Cafes by six, restaurants by ten.

Plai Laem

More a headland than a resort area, and the reason to come is the temple.

Wat Plai Laem is built around a lake, with an eighteen-armed statue of Guanyin rising out of the water and architecture considerably more ornate than the Big Buddha a few minutes away. Entry is free. You can buy fish food and feed the catfish, which is more absorbing than it has any right to be.

It is consistently quieter than Wat Phra Yai and, to our eye, the better of the two temples. Almost everybody does one and skips the other.

Beyond the temple, Plai Laem is largely villas and a few resorts. There is no strip and no real centre.

Choeng Mon

The one with the good beach.

Choeng Mon has a small, sheltered, genuinely swimmable bay with clear water and soft sand, which is exactly what Bangrak does not have and what Chaweng has too much company for.

It is a small crescent, backed by a handful of resorts and a short row of restaurants, and it is busiest in the middle of the day and empty by evening. At low tide you can walk out to the small island in the bay.

There is very little to do beyond the beach, which is the whole point of Choeng Mon.

If you want the beach and the quiet, this is the answer on Koh Samui. It is the recommendation we give most often to people who have looked at Chaweng and Fisherman's Village and not liked either.

A morning that covers all three

Start at the Big Buddha before eight. Twenty minutes, and you will have it close to yourself.

Breakfast on the Bangrak beach road. King of Bread opens at seven, Flo at eight.

Wat Plai Laem at half past nine. Another twenty minutes, and much quieter.

Choeng Mon beach from ten until the heat becomes unreasonable, which is around one.

Back to Bangrak for the afternoon, somewhere with air conditioning.

That is a good day, it costs almost nothing beyond food, and it covers more of what this corner is actually good at than a week of driving to Chaweng would.

Why it gets skipped

Three reasons, and they are all fair.

The beaches are inconsistent. Choeng Mon is good and small. Bangrak is not a swimming beach. Plai Laem barely has one. Anyone choosing by beach quality alone goes to Chaweng or Lamai.

There is no strip. No single street of bars and restaurants to walk along in the evening. Fisherman's Village has that and it is fifteen minutes away, which is why people stay there instead.

It is quiet after dark. Genuinely quiet. If you want an evening out, you are getting in a car.

None of these are wrong. They are just reasons that matter enormously for a one-week beach holiday and much less for a month.

Who this corner suits

People staying a while. People working. People with early flights or late arrivals. Repeat visitors who have done Chaweng. Anyone who has decided that the point of an island is not having very much to do.

Where we fit

We run Chillom on the Bangrak beach road, more or less in the middle of this corner and ten minutes from the airport.

It is a licensed medical cannabis dispensary with a cafe and lounge attached, and we are open from ten in the morning until two the following morning, which makes us the answer to the "it goes quiet at six" problem described above.

If you are staying in Choeng Mon or Plai Laem and looking for somewhere to be in the evening without driving to Chaweng, we are ten minutes away.