For those enjoying just a few days holiday in Koh Samui planning is essential to make travelling as stress free as possible. The biggest change in travel in Thailand has been the internet. People have access to lots of information about travel routes. And now 12go.asia has opened up some routes for online booking; these include the bus and ferry route between Koh Samui and Bangkok.
It used to be that you had to take time out of your holiday to get down to a travel agent to book tickets in advance for your journey in Thailand. I invariably got stuck in Khao San for the night because the Lomprayah coach and ferry was always sold out by the time we cleared international customs and got to their office in Khao San. Those days of having to either arrive on the day and take pot luck on getting tickets or having to go out of your way to organise tickets in advance are slowly disappearing.
Naturally you can book airline tickets online. Thai Air tickets are easily purchased online through their website. For a while you could use the Thai Rail site to reserve sleeper tickets. That only lasted a few months before the IT collapsed.
Luckily a private company has stepped into the breach. 12go.asia offers online booking for various journeys in Thailand. It is a modern looking website that is easy to understand. It clearly shows the prices and the times of departure and arrival. You just type in the route you are interested in along with the date of travel and the site lists available tickets for sale. You can buy tickets by credit card or by PayPal.
It is still early days for 12go.asia. Many journeys are not available. In many cases the website lists transport options but do not offer online booking. You can book a train from Bangkok to Suratthani City or Suratthani Airport but not the reverse journey. The best coverage is from Bangkok to various places in Thailand.
One of the problems with offering universal travel booking in Thailand is that there are so many small service providers. For example the Haad Rin Queen is not going to join anytime soon or the Thong Nai Pan Express.
I guess if they can improve the coverage for train journeys in Thailand and internal flights then that would be a massive step in the right direction. It allows holiday makers to reserve seats in advance so that they don’t have to worry about missing their flight back home or having to spend half a day booking tickets in advance.
Here is a brief list of links for booking travel tickets:
Book Lomprayah and Bus Koh Samui to Bangkok
Book Lomprayah and Bus Bangkok to Koh Samui
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