Koh Samui with Kids: How We Plan a Family Villa Week

Families make up a good share of the trips we run on Koh Samui, and they are the trips we plan most carefully. A couple can shrug off a long transfer or a beach with a shore break. A three-year-old cannot, and neither can the parent who carried them through two airports.

This is how we plan a family week here. It is written for parents of anyone from babies to teenagers, and for the grandparents who are often paying.

Why Samui suits families

The airport sits a couple of kilometres north of Chaweng, and most of the houses we use are twenty to forty minutes from the runway. Nobody arrives at the villa after a two-hour drive on a winding road, which is the quiet reason we often steer families here over the larger islands.

Thais are warm with small children, and villa and restaurant staff are used to having them around. If anyone gets ill, Bangkok Hospital Samui in Chaweng has a children's clinic, and there are other private hospitals on the island.

There is enough to fill a week: shallow bays for toddlers, and waterfalls and boat days for older children. Our insider's guide to Koh Samui covers the wider island these trips are built around.

Why we use a villa

For a family, we almost always recommend a private villa. Children wake early and nap in the afternoon, and a villa bends around that. Breakfast is when you want it. The pool is yours. Nobody minds the noise.

Before we hold a villa for a family, we check five things. The pool, first: whether it can be fenced or covered, how deep the shallow end really is, and whether you can see it from the kitchen and the living room. The stairs, because many of the best hillside houses above Chaweng Noi and Choeng Mon are built on steep plots with open steps and drops. Blackout in the children's rooms. A cot and a high chair already in the house when you arrive. And a cook who is happy making plain food without chilli.

For families with toddlers we choose flatter houses, usually on the beachfront or set back from it in the north around Bophut and Maenam, or on the west coast near Lipa Noi. The cliff-edge villas with the big views work better once the children are older.

A villa manager, a housekeeper and a cook are standard in the houses we use, and we add a nanny for families who want one. Ours are vetted, speak English and work in the house, so parents can take a long lunch or a spa afternoon while the children stay at the villa with someone they already know. The full range of houses we hold is on the Stay House page.

The beaches we choose for children

Samui has plenty of beaches, and only some of them suit small children. The sea is calmest in different places at different times of year, so we choose by month as well as by age.

For toddlers, our first choice is Lipa Noi on the west coast. The sand is soft, there is no rock or coral underfoot, and at low tide the water stays shallow a very long way out. It is quiet, with little more than a few beach bars, so we send the family with a picnic, shade and a bag of buckets. It faces west, so you get the sunset.

Choeng Mon, in the north-east, is the other one we use most. It is a small, sheltered bay with gentle water and the two little islands of Koh Fan Noi and Koh Fan Yai sitting just offshore. There is more around it, a few cafés and restaurants on the sand, and the rocks at one end give older children something to explore with a mask.

Bophut is the beach for a family that likes to walk to dinner. The water is less clear than in the north-east, but the Fisherman's Village sits right behind the sand, and its Friday night walking street, with food stalls, music and small shops, is popular with children of every age. Go early, before it gets crowded.

When to come

On Samui, the driest, most reliable months are late December to April, with the flattest sea from February. The wet weeks are October and November. July and August are mild and green, with far less rain than Phuket gets at the same time. The month-by-month detail is in our guide to the best time to visit Koh Samui.

For UK families, February half-term and Easter land in the best of the dry season, and the summer holidays fall in the island's mild green months. Christmas sells out a year ahead. Our guide to getting to Koh Samui from the UK covers the routes and the timing that softens jet lag.

For Australian families, the second half of the long summer break, from early to late January, is the best fit: the rains have passed and the sea is settling. The two-week winter break in late June and July works well too. The September and October holidays are less certain, as the wet season starts to build towards the end of them.

For families in the Gulf, July and August work best: around thirty-one degrees here, while it is well over forty at home. And for anyone free in term time, September is the month we rate most for value, for the reasons in Koh Samui in September.

Getting here with children

From Australia, the easiest route is one change in Singapore, then a direct flight of just under two hours into Samui. From the UK and the Gulf, most families connect in Bangkok, where flights to the island leave roughly every hour and take about sixty-five minutes.

On the travel day we book bulkhead seats where we can get them, a connection with enough slack for a nappy change and a snack, and a car at Samui with the right child seats already fitted. Taxis in Thailand rarely carry them, so we bring our own. The villa is ready on arrival, with the cot made up and something simple waiting in the kitchen.

The first afternoon is for the pool and an early night. We never book anything for day one.

A week that works

Most of our family weeks run to the same rhythm. Mornings are for going out, while it is cooler. Afternoons are for the villa: lunch, a sleep, the pool. Evenings are early, and dinner comes to the house more often than not.

Across the week, we mix in a few outings. A morning on Lipa Noi or Choeng Mon. A boat day, timed for calm water: the north coast of Koh Phangan is thirty minutes across the sea, and the day we plan there works well with children. Families with older children often take a private boat into Ang Thong marine park, which we run on a gentler timetable for them; our guide to Ang Thong by private yacht explains how. Ang Thong usually closes from 1 November to around mid December.

Inland, Na Muang 1 is the waterfall we take children to. It is a short walk from the car park to the falls, and the pool at the bottom is good for a paddle. We don't book the animal shows still advertised around the island, for welfare reasons.

For teenagers, there is more on the table: a first dive course across the water on Koh Tao, paddleboarding, a Thai cooking class at the villa, Muay Thai with a trainer who comes to the house. We let each of them pick one.

We also leave at least two days with nothing planned, and book one evening out for the parents while the nanny stays at the villa.

What we handle

We hold the house, book the flights and the child seats, stock the kitchen with the food your children eat at home, line up the nanny and the boat, and change the plan when someone wakes up with a temperature. Grandparents on the trip get a ground-floor room and a driver of their own.

Everything we arrange on the island sits under the Houses. If you are thinking about next Easter or the summer holidays, send us the children's ages and your dates. We will come back with a house and a draft of the week.

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Koh Samui with kids: the questions we get

Is Koh Samui good for a family holiday with young children?

Yes. The flight from Bangkok is about an hour, the airport is a short drive from most of the villas we use, and the island has calm, shallow bays, good private hospitals and plenty of space. A staffed villa makes it easier still: a cook who knows the children's meals, a pool you can see from the kitchen and a quiet house for afternoon naps.

What is the best beach in Koh Samui for kids?

For toddlers, Lipa Noi on the west coast: soft sand, no rocks underfoot and water that stays shallow a long way out at low tide. Choeng Mon in the north-east is a sheltered bay with gentle water and more around it for older children. Check the tide on the day, because the shallow stretches change with it.

When is the best time to visit Koh Samui with kids?

Late December to April is the driest stretch, which suits UK Easter and February half-term and the end of the Australian summer holidays. July and August are a good second choice, with far less rain than Phuket. We avoid October and November, the island's wet season.

How do you get to Koh Samui from Australia with children?

The easiest route is one change in Singapore, then a direct flight of just under two hours into Samui. Families from the UK and the Gulf usually connect in Bangkok, where flights to Samui leave roughly every hour and take about sixty-five minutes. We book bulkhead seats, child seats for the cars and a slow first afternoon.