So you’ve made your way to Koh Chang, one of the largest islands in Thailand, and you’ve promptly realized there are wayyyy more restaurants than you could possibly eat at, and that a lot of the menus are the same. So now, you’re trying to figure out which of the hundreds of Koh Chang restaurants you should be eating at.
Well you came to the right place. I sampled quite a few of the island’s offerings during my week stay, so really I did the hard work for you. Here’s my pared down list of the best Koh Chang restaurants so you can eat the best Thai food, and support local while you’re at it. (Lets be real, do you actually want pasta)???
The cheapest breakfast and espresso we found on the island, plus the most delicious. They have homemade grainy bread and the omelettes are massive. We ate here almost every morning. They have an extensive menu outside of breakfast as well, my personal favourite being the green papaya pad thai. Basically, it’s pad thai, but instead of rice noodles they use young papaya. It’s the photo on the bottom left, and you really can’t even tell the difference. At home I’m a huge fan of faking vegetables as noodles, so it was a nice change from my high rice and noodle diet.
Out of all the restaurants on the island, Tamarin is my hands down favourite Koh Chang restaurant. Easily the best food that we had in our week on the island, it’s a family ran restaurant and the owner’s little daughter and her two puppies are just the icing on the cake. Technically Tamarin is in Bailan, but it’s just a short scoot south from Lonely Beach. We had heard that they had the best massman curry on the island, and as a self proclaimed massaman curry expert, I had to try it. Ended up eating there three times because the food was SO good. The masaman curry was everything I dreamed of, and the fresh spring rolls were so good.
Word of warning, the meals are HUGE. Tom and I each got a curry and then spring rolls to share, and we had to force down the last few bites. The best thing about the whole meal though? The house made caramels they give with your bill.
Convenience Store Restaurant – Koh Chang Restaurants
This family run operation in Lonely Beach, is on the corner of the one main street in Koh Chang and Soi Tian Chai 2. It doesn’t have a name or a sign of any sort, but it is the perfect spot for a quick meal and a cheap beer. A mother and daughter duo cook at a temporary set up in the entrance, and there are two tables inside the convenience store to eat, so self-serve a beer while waiting for your meal.
We tried almost everything on the menu, and while the cashew chicken was fairly meh, the prawn pad thai and red curry were fantastic! Plus, for 50 baht a plate you might as well try everything?
Kloy Restaurant – Kho Chang Restaurants
When the majority of the crowd is local and you have to wait for a table, you know it’s going to be good. We had the crispy pork and a shrimp red curry. The curry had so many shrimp, such a positive in my books. Make sure to let them know your level of spice preference, we said a little spice and it definitely had a kiiiiick. The food was ridiculously good, and super cheap!
Heatree Seafood – Koh Chang Restaurants
If you’re on a tropical beach island, it would be an absolute travesty to miss out on some fresh-from-the-ocean seafood. This is where Heatree Seafood comes in. They offer a full menu, or pick and choose by weight seafood option. The front of the open air restaurant is lined with ice filled troughs, overflowing with fresh seafood. They have every ocean offering you could possibly want and it’s very well priced (good cheap, not so cheap you wonder how old it is).
We had the grilled scallops with garlic butter and crab yellow curry and it was SO good.
Nong Gao – Koh Chang Restaurants
Nong Gao is one of the cute little beachy restaurants on the back road running parallel to Klong Kloi beach. Look how colorful it is, it’s impossible to miss it. The food was super fresh (the seafood man peddled by as we were eating and the owner ran out to buy shrimp for that night), and the pad thai was great!
To eat in Koh Chang, you’re going to need to get to Koh Chang first.
Bus – Mini buses to Trat leave from Mochit Bus Station or Ekkamai Bus Station in Bangkok. The mini buses stop at a ‘terminal’ of sorts on the highway, and from here it’s a 45 minute ride to the ferry terminal in the back of a pick up truck. Our tickets covered the ride down to the pier, but didn’t include the ferry ticket. The ferry ticket was 80 baht, and took around a half hour to cross. A boat leaves every hour until 5 pm!
Plane – The closest airport to Koh Chang is in Trat, with direct flights to and from Bangkok a couple times a day. The flight is about an hour, and can get fairly expensive if you’re booking last minute. From the airport to the ferry terminal is about a 30 minute drive. Ferries to Koh Chang leave from Ao Thammachat Pier and from Centerpoint Pier.
All of the Ko Chang restaurants listed are scattered up and down the west coast of the island, and they’re definitely not walkable.
Collectivo trucks run the route up and down the western coast, but it’s not a cheap ride, ranging from 60-200 baht depending on how far you’re going.
Scooter rental shops aren’t as prevalent on Ko Chang as they are elsewhere in Thailand. Depending on how comfortable you are on a scooter you can get a taxi from the pier to White Sands and get a bike there and drive to wherever you’re staying. A rental is 200-250 baht a day, but if you’re renting for more than a day or two you can usually weasel a bit of a discount.
Some accommodations offer free pick up from the pier, so look into that if you have somewhere pre-booked!
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