Coral Island Activities

Ko He — better known outside Thailand as Coral Island — sits roughly six kilometres south of Cape Panwa, a limestone-fringed outcrop barely 400 metres across at its widest point. The island draws its English name not from a reef overhead but from the dense hard-coral gardens that ring its eastern and southern shores, some colonies documented at depths exceeding twelve metres. Fishermen from Rawai were working these waters long before organised tourism arrived; the earliest recorded commercial boat service to Ko He launched in the late 1980s, coinciding with Phuket's first wave of international resort development. The island carries two principal beaches: Banana Beach on the northern tip, which faces the Phuket mainland and benefits from calmer, more sheltered water, and the longer Long Beach to the south, exposed to open Andaman swells and preferred by windsurf operators. Between them runs a single sandy track lined with beach-chair concessions, equipment-hire shacks, and a handful of open-sided seafood restaurants. Coral island activities today span a notably wide spectrum: glass-bottom boat circuits that pass over brain-coral formations, introductory scuba dives for uncertified visitors, parasailing runs that lift riders to roughly 80 metres above the channel, and banana-boat circuits that have operated here continuously since the early 1990s. What distinguishes Ko He from Phuket's more commercially saturated islands is scale. The island's 100 THB per-person entrance fee — collected at the pier — funds a beach-maintenance programme that limits overnight camping and controls the number of vendor licences. The result is a foreshore that, outside peak midday hours, retains a measure of open space rare among Phuket's accessible day-trip destinations. Marine biologists from Prince of Songkla University have periodically monitored the coral gardens here; a 2022 survey recorded 38 hard-coral species within the protected zone, a count that places Ko He among the more biodiverse nearshore reefs remaining in the inner Andaman. Coral island activities tours departing from Chalong Pier and Rawai Beach carry visitors across a channel that, on clear mornings, shows the seafloor through three metres of water. The snorkelling zone on the eastern flank is buoy-marked and patrolled by longtail tenders, ensuring swimmers stay clear of boat traffic. A coral island activities tour typically includes equipment — mask, fins, and vest — as part of the operator package, though independent visitors arriving by private speedboat are welcome to bring their own gear. Demand for coral island activities tickets has grown steadily since 2023, driven in part by visitors seeking shorter, self-contained day excursions rather than multi-island packages. The island remains day-access only; no overnight accommodation operates on Ko He, which concentrates all visitor activity within the daily 08:00–18:00 window and preserves the quiet that returns each evening.