On 21 June 2026, Thailand's Marine Department confirmed what island ferry passengers across Phang Nga Bay have been quietly awaiting: four upgraded piers will form an Andaman Sea ring route, and the two that matter most to the Koh Yao district are already under construction [ref:1].
The route is simple to trace on any map. Stand at Bang Rong Pier on Phuket's east coast — the timber landing where longtails idle between runs and fishing nets dry in the salt air — and look east across the bay. Koh Yao Noi floats there, roughly an hour by boat, its mangrove-fringed shore sheltering a community of around 3,500 people who grow rice, raise lobsters in floating cages, and weave rush mats in their yards between fishing seasons. Koh Yao Yai extends south, quieter still.
Getting there has never been difficult. Getting everywhere from there has been. A traveller who crossed from Phuket to spend time on Koh Yao and then wanted to continue to Krabi faced either a return crossing and a three-and-a-half-hour road journey, or a patchwork of smaller boats and uncertain timetables. That triangle — Phuket, Koh Yao, Krabi — has always felt incomplete from the water.
The new marine ring route closes the gap. By upgrading Manoh Pier on Koh Yao Noi and Chong Lard Pier on Koh Yao Yai, while adding two new landings at Por Bay in Phuket and Tha Lane in Krabi, the department is spending ฿740 million to stitch the 97-kilometre sea crossing into a two-hour journey [ref:1]. Targeted for completion by 2027, the route will let a traveller step off the ferry on Koh Yao Noi and carry on to Krabi without a car, a backtrack, or a half-day lost to the road.
What the project also carries, less prominently reported, is an intention written into its design. One of the new landings is named Baan Yamu Community Marina. The word "community" is doing real work in that title. Plans emphasise inclusive access — facilities designed to serve small-scale fishers, local vendors, and community-run tourism initiatives, not simply point-to-point transit for day-trippers with wheeled luggage [ref:2].
That distinction matters on Koh Yao Noi. The island has long maintained an economy of its own choosing: Muslim fishing families, community-based homestays, a local tourism board that sets its own pace. More connectivity has always carried a double edge here. Faster access from Phuket means more visitors; more visitors mean more trade for the morning market and the boatyard, but also more pressure on rice paddies and a way of life that is not performing itself for an audience.
The "Marina for Communities" framing suggests, at least in principle, that infrastructure should answer to the people already living along the dock, not only to those arriving at it. Whether that intention survives construction and day-to-day operation depends, as it always does, on who holds the contracts and who holds the keys to the new passenger lounge.
For now, the Koh Yao community has something tangible: upgraded berths where their fishing boats will moor alongside ferry passengers, shade in a proper waiting area instead of a concrete shelf, and a sea connection to Krabi's Tha Lane Pier that carves ninety minutes from the journey. The fisherman who currently brings his catch to the Phuket market by boat and road will be able to cross and return without losing the whole day.
These four piers will change the way people read the bay. Where the Andaman ring was once a metaphor — a shared sea, a shared identity among scattered islands — it is becoming a navigable circuit. Koh Yao Noi will sit at the pivot point of that circuit, as it has always sat at the geographic centre of Phang Nga Bay: limestone karsts on every horizon, the bay's green water moving beneath the hull, the nets pulled up by hand at the same hour they have been pulled for generations.
The longtails at Bang Rong Pier are still the vessels that tie these islands together. The new piers will not replace them. They will simply give more people a reason to look east from Phuket and board one.
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