4 Island Tour Krabi: Explore the Four Islands in One Day

The 4 island tour Krabi runs every day from Ao Nang. A longtail or speedboat grabs you around 9 a.m., hits Phra Nang Cave Beach, Chicken Island, Tup Island and Poda Island, and drops you back at your hotel by about 4 p.m., probably a bit sunburnt. A shared seat is ฿599–฿1,200 per adult in 2026. The national park fee (usually ฿200 per adult) is separate. Cash only.

That is the Krabi 4 Island Tour in brief. What's below is the stuff that decides whether the day is great or just fine: which boat, when the sandbar actually shows up, what the price really covers. And how not to roll into Phra Nang at the exact minute forty other boats do. Because that happens. A lot.

1. 1Phra Nang Cave BeachRailay · cave shrine
2. 2Chicken IslandKoh Kai · reef snorkel
3. 3Tup IslandTalay Waek sandbar
4. 4Poda IslandLunch · sea stack

Introduction to the 4 Island Tour

What is the 4 Island Tour?

The 4 Island Tour is a guided boat trip in Krabi Province, down on Thailand’s Andaman coast. Three small islands, one beach you can only reach by boat. The islands belong to Hat Noppharat Thara–Mu Ko Phi Phi National Park and on a clear morning you can see them from Ao Nang Beach. That's the trick. Each crossing is 10–25 minutes, so you spend the day swimming, not sitting on a bench.

Why Krabi? The limestone. Sheer karst cliffs, sea stacks, spits of white sand; this coastline gets photographed to death and honestly it deserves it. The 4 Island Tour is the cheapest, shortest way to grab a big slice of it. Want the one-paragraph feel of the day? Read what the 4 island tour actually is.

Here's what a standard shared tour covers, and what it doesn't:

Tour Itinerary and Destinations

Islands Visited on the Tour

Four stops. The tide shuffles the order, the list itself never changes:

• Phra Nang Cave Beach sits at the southern tip of the Railay peninsula. The beach holds the Princess Cave, a fertility shrine filled with carved wooden offerings. It is technically mainland, but no road reaches it.
• Chicken Island (Koh Kai) has a rock pinnacle shaped like a chicken’s head and neck. The island’s shallow reef gives the best snorkeling of the day. Our Chicken Island guide covers the viewpoint trail too.
• Tup Island (Koh Tup) is joined to tiny Koh Mor by a white sandbar called Talay Waek. At low tide you walk across the sea between the two.
• Poda Island (Koh Poda) is the largest of the group. Poda Island hosts the lunch stop, a long white beach and a lone sea stack just offshore.

Poda Island is roughly a kilometre across, with toilets, a small restaurant and a park ranger station. Chicken Island's smaller, about 600 by 1,000 metres, a café and not much else. Tup and Mor? Rocks with trees on top, basically. Every stop has a beach you wade onto straight off the boat. The island-by-island version, route map included, is on 4 island tour Krabi names and map.

Transportation and Logistics

Getting to the Tour Starting Point

Everything leaves from Ao Nang, pretty much. Most speedboats go from Nopparat Thara Pier, 2–3 km west of the main beach; plenty of longtails just shove off from Ao Nang Beach itself. The operator sends a minivan or open-sided songthaew to your hotel, normally between 08:00 and 08:30. Free inside Ao Nang. From Krabi Town, Klong Muang or Tub Kaek it's around ฿100 per person. Staying on Railay? They fetch you by boat. Directions and pier stuff live on the starting point page.

The boat shapes your day more than anything else. A longtail is a narrow wooden boat with a car engine on a long propeller shaft: loud, splashy, cheap, completely Thai. Speedboats are enclosed-ish, faster, smoother when it gets choppy. Same route either way. Same beaches.

Activities and Experiences

Activities Included in the Tour

Snorkeling's the main event. The guide anchors off Chicken Island, passes round masks and life jackets and turns you loose for 30–45 minutes over a shallow reef, 3–5 metres deep. Parrotfish, butterflyfish, sergeant majors. Not turtles, not sharks, don't get your hopes up. Clearest water runs December to April.

The rest of the day? Simpler stuff:

• Walking the Talay Waek sandbar between Tup and Mor at low tide.
• Swimming and lying on the sand at Poda Island after lunch.
• Photographing the sea stacks off Poda and Phra Nang.
• Poking into the Princess Cave shrine at Phra Nang Cave Beach.
• Spotting macaques on Tup and Chicken Island — watch them, never feed them.

The island stops come with a national park fee. Rangers or the crew take it in cash, usually at the pier or on Poda Island, and it pays for rangers, toilets and beach cleaning. Why it's almost never in the ticket price, and why some listings still say ฿400... that's a whole saga, covered on the national park fee page.

Booking and Costs

Tour Costs and Booking Information

On a shared boat the 4 Island Tour costs between ฿599 and ฿1,200 per adult in 2026. Ao Nang agencies online start at ฿599 for a longtail and ฿749 for a speedboat. Walk up to a beach stand and they'll open around ฿1,000, then haggle, they expect it. Kids pay roughly ฿100–฿200 less.

A Private 4 Island Tour costs more per boat and less per head once there are four or more of you. Odd maths, but true. Shared seats you can book online the day before, or at a stand on Ao Nang’s beach road that same evening. Full cost breakdown: the 4 island tour Krabi price page. The step-by-step sits under booking the tour.

Additional Considerations

Private Tour Options

Go private and you get the boat, the captain and (the big one) the clock. Leave when you like, stay as long as you like, skip whichever beach bores you. Timing is everything: head out at 7:30 a.m. or after 2 p.m. and Phra Nang is you plus a handful of people instead of a mob.

• Customisation: add Railay West, a second snorkel spot or a sunset finish.
• Logistics: a private longtail boat takes up to about 8 people and meets you on Ao Nang Beach or at your resort.
• Extras: lunch, a guide and the park fee are often billed separately on private charters.

The private boat guide weighs longtail against speedboat charters and does the per-person maths.

Best Time to Visit and Safety

For boats, Krabi really has two seasons. November to April is dry: calm seas, clear water, top prices, with December and January the absolute peak. Then May to October and the southwest monsoon. Showers, swell, the odd cancellation, and September and October are the worst of it. Checking one specific day? The Thai Meteorological Department posts marine forecasts.

A few safety rules you should keep in mind:

• Wear the life jacket while snorkeling, even if you swim well — boat traffic is heavy.
• Wear water shoes on the sandbar; broken shell and coral are sharp.
• Use reef-safe sunscreen and a rash guard. The open-water sun is brutal by 11 a.m.
• Do not stand on or touch coral. Rangers can fine you for damaging it.
• Pregnant travellers should skip the tour; most operators refuse them on board.
• Book with a TAT-licensed operator. The Tourism Authority of Thailand licenses tour agencies, and a licence number on the voucher is a good sign.

Explore the guide

Each page here answers exactly one question about the Krabi 4 Island Tour. Grab the one you need: