A boat trip to Phi Phi Island from Phuket is not one product. The crossing takes a little over an hour, and the day you end up with depends on four things: what time the boat leaves, how many people are on it, what the fare actually covers, and the month you travel. This guide compares those choices so you can book the day that suits you rather than the first one you find.
What a boat trip to Phi Phi Island from Phuket actually involves
The Phi Phi Islands sit across open water to the south-east of Phuket. They are a small archipelago, and only Phi Phi Don is inhabited — the rest, including the cliff-walled Phi Phi Leh, are uninhabited park land (
Wikipedia, Phi Phi Islands). If you want to know which island is which before you choose a day, our
guide to the two bays of Phi Phi Don covers the geography.
There are two ways across. A passenger ferry runs to the Phi Phi Don piers and takes roughly two hours each way; it is transport, and it leaves you on the island. A speedboat day is a loop — out from Phuket, several stops around both islands, back the same afternoon. Two Sea Tour runs the second kind. The boat leaves Boat Lagoon Marina on Phuket's east coast at 6:00 AM, the crossing takes about one hour and ten minutes, and the day takes in Maya Bay, Pileh Lagoon, two snorkelling reefs chosen on the morning for conditions, a drift-by of the Viking Cave and Monkey Beach, and a final beach stop at Bamboo Island or Koh Rang Yai depending on the sea (
Two Sea Tour, Phi Phi tour page, 2026).
If what you want is the hour-by-hour shape of that day rather than the comparison, we have written it out separately in
what a Phi Phi speedboat day looks like.
The seven checks that decide what kind of day you get
- Check the departure time first. A 6:00 AM start reaches Maya Bay ahead of the day-boat fleet; an 8:00 AM start reaches it alongside them.
- Ask how many passengers the boat carries. The number changes how long each stop takes and how long everyone waits to get back aboard.
- Read what the fare covers. National park fees, hotel pickup, meals and snorkelling gear are included by some operators and added later by others.
- Count the stops, then ask how long you get at each one. Seven stops across eight hours is a different day from seven stops across five.
- Check the month you are travelling. Maya Bay closes each August and September under Phi Phi National Park rules, and some afternoon departures run in high season only.
- Confirm the cancellation terms before you pay, particularly if you are booking weeks ahead of your trip.
- Decide whether you want to share the boat or take it privately. That single choice changes the price, the pace and the route.
Comparing the join-in days that leave Phuket
Two Sea Tour runs four shared departures. They are genuinely different days rather than variations on one itinerary, so the table below is the quickest way to see which one fits.
| Day |
Where it goes |
Shape of the day |
Group |
From, per person |
Runs |
| Phi Phi Islands |
Maya Bay, Pileh Lagoon, two snorkelling reefs, Bamboo Island |
About eight hours, 6:00 AM departure |
Max 18 adults |
฿5,310 |
All year |
| Phang Nga Bay |
Limestone karsts, sea caves, mangroves, James Bond Island |
Full day |
Max 18 adults |
฿4,500 |
All year |
| Phi Phi, afternoon departure |
Phi Phi in the late-afternoon light |
Half day, afternoon |
Max 18 adults |
฿4,810 |
November to April only |
| Khao Sok |
Rainforest and a night on Cheow Lan Lake, inland |
Two days |
Small group |
On the booking page |
All year |
Every figure above is a from-price, and fares move with the season — the monsoon months and the November-to-April high season do not cost the same, and a date in late December is not priced like a date in June. Treat these as the starting point rather than the price of your day, and check the
tour page for your own dates. Child fares appear in the booking widget once a date is selected.
Two things worth knowing before you compare these with anything else. There is no snorkelling at Phang Nga Bay — the bay has no coral reefs, and snorkelling belongs to the Phi Phi days. And Two Sea Tour does not run to the Similan Islands; they are too far north for a day trip out of Phuket, whatever a listing may suggest.
Why the departure time matters more than the boat
This is the single biggest variable in a boat trip to Phi Phi Island from Phuket, and it is the one most itineraries bury. Most Phi Phi operators leave Phuket around 8:00 AM and reach Maya Bay between 9:00 and 10:00 — the same window in which the day-trip fleet arrives from Krabi, Koh Lanta and Phi Phi Don. Two Sea Tour leaves at 6:00. Sunrise happens at sea during the crossing rather than at the bay, the boat is ashore at Maya Bay around 7:15 AM, and it is pulling away by 8:30 as the first of those boats arrive (Two Sea Tour, Phi Phi tour page, 2026).
That buys you fewer people on the sand, not exclusive use of the bay. Maya Bay is a national park site and no operator has it to itself. What the early start reliably changes is the order you see things in, and how much of the morning you spend waiting for somebody else to move.
What the fare covers, and what it does not
On the Two Sea Tour Phi Phi day the fare includes national park fees, hotel pickup from the main Phuket tourist coast, a light breakfast, snorkelling gear, life jackets and floating aids, and a buffet lunch back at Soho Pool Club on Boat Lagoon Marina with coffee, tea, soft drinks and water. VAT and the booking fee were absorbed in 2025, so the figure shown on the tour page is the figure you pay at checkout (Two Sea Tour, Phi Phi tour page, 2026).
Where lunch happens is worth noticing when you compare days, because it changes the end of the afternoon. Some Phi Phi itineraries feed you on a beach or on the boat and then run the long crossing home on a full stomach. The Two Sea Tour day does the crossing first and serves a sit-down buffet back at the marina, which means the last hour of the day is spent somewhere with shade, a bathroom and a cold drink rather than at sea.
What the fare does not include: alcohol, which is not carried on the boat but is available at Soho over lunch, and pickup from outside the standard Phuket zone, which may carry a surcharge — worth confirming at the time of booking. Cancellation is free up to 24 hours before departure, and inside 24 hours the fare is held unless Two Sea Tour cancels the day for sea conditions.
Group size, and why eighteen is the number to ask about
Standard fleet capacity is a hard cap of 18 adults, or 19 people in total when children are aboard (Two Sea Tour, Phi Phi tour page, 2026). That cap is the reason a boat trip to Phi Phi Island from Phuket can feel unhurried on one boat and managed on another: eighteen people board, snorkel and re-board at a pace a group of forty cannot.
Group size is also the easiest claim for an operator to make and the hardest for a traveller to verify. If you are weighing operators rather than itineraries, our guide to
choosing a small-group operator sets out what to ask and what the answers should sound like.
Choosing by season: late October to April
Phuket's high season runs roughly November to April, and the sea state through those months is what makes the Phi Phi crossing comfortable. Two things follow from that. From November a third Phi Phi option opens — the afternoon departure, which runs November to April only — so from next month the choice is wider than it is this week (Two Sea Tour join-in tour pages, 25 October 2026). And Maya Bay closes every August and September for ecosystem recovery under Phi Phi National Park rules, with Bamboo Island substituted on those departures. In practice that substitution matters less than it sounds: at seven in the morning Bamboo Island is as quiet as Maya Bay, and the rest of the route is unchanged. If Maya Bay is the reason you are going, though, travel outside those two months.
Demand is already moving. Searches for "phi phi" in Thailand averaged 91 in the week to 25 October 2026 against 64 three weeks earlier, on Google Trends' 0–100 relative scale — the highest week in ninety days. In practice that means the better departures in December and January fill early, and booking a boat trip to Phi Phi Island from Phuket a few weeks ahead is worth more than it was in September.
Sharing the boat, or taking it privately
A join-in day puts you on a shared boat with a fixed route and a fixed departure time, and it is the sensible default for most people. A private charter gives you the boat, the start time and the order of the stops, which is worth paying for when you are travelling as a group, or with very small children, or when you want a slower day than a timetable allows. Both are listed on the
private charter pages alongside the shared departures.
One more option is worth naming, because people often discover it too late: if Phi Phi is the point of the trip rather than one day of it, staying on the island changes the comparison entirely. We have set out that case in
choosing a base on Phi Phi.
Planning your day
If you have read this far, the decision is probably down to two things: the departure time you are willing to get up for, and whether you want the shared boat or the whole one. The Phi Phi day leaves Boat Lagoon Marina at 6:00 AM, carries a maximum of 18 adults, and runs all year under TAT licence 34/02111. The itinerary, the current fare and live availability are on the
Phi Phi tour page.
If you would rather talk it through than read another page, call +66 81 787 7702 or send a message on WhatsApp to +66 62 979 9974. Tell us the dates and who is travelling and we will tell you which of the four days we would put you on.
