Laem Chabang Cruise Day Trip: 8 Hours in Pattaya or Bangkok
Your ship is in for the day and there is nothing inside the terminal to spend it on. A private car meets you at Terminal A1, stays with you for 8 hours, and has you back at the gangway before the all-aboard call. The port charge for the car is already in the fare and you pay the driver in cash at the end.
What the fare includes
- The round trip out of Terminal A1 and back to it
- 8 hours of car and driver, waiting time inside them
- A driver who runs this port most weeks
- Fuel and the road tolls
- The ฿450 port charge for the car
Not included
- Entrance tickets
- Parking where a place charges for it
- A guide — your driver drives
- Food and drink
฿500 for each hour past 8, in cash to the driver at the end of the day.
The Short Version
- 8 hours, round trip from Terminal A1 and back to it, the driver waiting with you throughout
- ฿4,500 in a Family SUV (4 passengers), ฿5,500 in a Minivan (8 passengers), per car rather than per person
- The ฿450 Laem Chabang port charge for the car is inside that fare, not on top of it
- Pattaya is about 25 km away, roughly 30 to 40 minutes each way. Bangkok city is about 2 hours each way
- You choose the stops, and you can change them during the day
- ฿500 for each hour past 8, settled with the driver rather than added to the online quote
- Entrance tickets, parking, a guide and your food are not in the fare. Nothing else is left out
- Cash to the driver at the end. Nothing is paid in advance
Back at the ship before it sails
Every question a cruise passenger asks us is a version of this one, so here is the answer before anything else. You give us your all-aboard time when you book. The driver plans the day backwards from that time rather than forwards from breakfast, and the last leg is built around getting you through the port gate with room in hand instead of around fitting in one more stop. If the day is running long he will tell you at the stop before the one that would cost you the ship, which is the only point at which telling you is any use.
That is a promise about how the day is planned, not a guarantee against a road closure on Sukhumvit, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What we can say is that our drivers run to Laem Chabang most weeks, know what the port road is like on a turnaround day, and have no wish to explain to a port officer why their passengers are on the wrong side of the fence.
Where the driver meets you inside the port
At Terminal A1, the passenger building inside Laem Chabang, in the pickup area outside the doors with your name on a board. There is no alternative to this and it is worth understanding why. Laem Chabang is a working container port and you cannot walk out of it: the terminal exits onto an industrial road well over a kilometre from the public gate, and passengers have to leave the pier area by vehicle. Some lines run their own shuttle into Pattaya, but not to Bangkok, and it goes when it goes.
Give us the ship's name and the date it berths rather than a pickup time you have guessed at. Disembarkation slips, and a driver who is waiting for your ship instead of for half past eight is the difference between a relaxed start and a queue you are watching from behind glass.
The port charge is already in the fare
Laem Chabang charges ฿450 for a car to come into the port and collect you from the pier. That charge is inside the fares above. Nothing is collected at the barrier, nothing appears at the end of the day, and the number you booked is the number you hand over.
It is worth being specific about this because it is the charge cruise passengers get caught by most often. A driver who quoted a price without it has to find it somewhere, and the place he finds it is at the gate, from you, with the meter of your day already running.
Waiting, stops and how the day actually runs
Waiting is the whole point of buying hours rather than a journey. The car standing in a temple car park for forty minutes costs exactly what the car moving costs, because the 8 hours are already paid for. Stops are not counted and not charged. Four places in a day is a normal shape, five or six works if they sit close together, and the driver will give you a straight answer at the second stop about whether the fourth is still on.
Your bags stay in the car between stops, and so does the air conditioning. Tell the driver at the start what matters most to you out of the list you have made, because the order he drives them in is what decides whether you get all of it.
Payment, and what happens before the day
Nothing is paid in advance and no card details are taken. Every booking is read by hand and we come back to you in writing with the driver and the price before your ship arrives, so the figure is settled long before anyone is standing on a pier. At the end of the 8 hours you hand the driver Thai baht in cash. Twelve hours' notice is the minimum and a few days is better for a ship in port on a weekend.
What the fare covers, and what it does not
One price for the whole car, agreed before you travel, and it holds whatever the day does. Included:
- The round trip out of Terminal A1 and back to the terminal
- 8 hours of the car and the driver, with waiting time already inside that
- A professional driver who runs this port regularly
- Fuel and the road tolls
- The ฿450 Laem Chabang port charge for the car
Four things are not in it, and it is better to be blunt about them:
- Entrance tickets at anything you visit
- Parking charges where a place charges to park
- A tour guide. Your driver drives and knows the roads; he is not a guide
- Food and drink for the day
Run past the 8 hours and each extra hour is ฿500, the same in either vehicle, paid to the driver in cash at the end. It is never added to the price the form quotes you, because that figure is the package you booked. Child seats work as they do everywhere else on the site, asked for in the notes box, with the sizes and the charge set out on the child seat and booster page.
Where to go in Pattaya on a cruise day trip
Laem Chabang sits about 25 km north of Pattaya and the drive is roughly 30 to 40 minutes each way. That is a little over an hour of the day spent in the car and close to six and a half hours on the ground, which is why most passengers with one day in port spend it here rather than in Bangkok.
The ten below are what our drivers actually get asked for. Three of them share Pratumnak Hill and can be done as one stop. The opening hours and ticket prices are other people's numbers and they move, so treat them as a guide and check anything your day depends on.
Four Regions Floating Market
Nine in the morning until about eight at night, seven days a week, which is more forgiving than most of this list. It is a built market rather than a working one: four zones standing for Thailand's four regions, teak boardwalks over the water, and sellers working out of boats tied alongside them. Entry runs somewhere around 200 to 300 baht depending on which counter you buy at. Ninety minutes covers it comfortably.
Tiger Park
It sits on Sukhumvit about seven kilometres north of the beach, which puts it roughly on your way in from the port rather than out of it. Adult entry is around 300 baht, gates nine to six with the last tickets sold about half past five. The close encounters are priced separately by the size of the animal and a couple of them want booking a day ahead, so decide before you land instead of at the counter.
Pattaya View Point
Free, and open from early morning until around nine at night. The terrace on Pratumnak Hill looks straight down the curve of the bay, and on a clear day you can pick out the ships lying at anchor. Twenty minutes is enough. It shares a hill with the Big Buddha, so taking both costs you one stop rather than two.
Big Buddha, Wat Phra Yai
An eighteen-metre gilded Buddha sits at the top of a naga-flanked staircase on Pratumnak Hill, and there is no gate fee to climb it. The temple keeps working-day hours, roughly eight to five, with smaller shrines and a row of bells along the terrace below. Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off at the shrine doors. Most people are back in the car inside half an hour.
Terminal 21 and Central Pattaya
The mall opens late morning and runs to about ten at night, and it is the one thing on this list that rescues a wet afternoon. Each floor is dressed as a different city, and the food court on the top floor is enormous and costs very little. It also has clean toilets and air conditioning, which matter more than they should after four hours in the sun. The Central Pattaya shops and the beach road are a few minutes further along.
Gems Gallery
Entry is free and nobody is obliged to buy anything, which is worth saying out loud, because a jewellery showroom on a day-trip list usually means the opposite. You walk past the cutting and setting benches before you reach the shop, and the ride through the mock sapphire mine takes about ten minutes and amuses children more than it has any right to. If nobody in the party wants to shop, skip it. There is nothing else there.
Sanctuary of Truth
Adult entry is about 500 baht and the site closes around six, with the last tickets sold an hour or so before that. It is an unfinished teak building standing on the water at Naklua, carved end to end, under construction since 1981 with no completion date anybody takes seriously. Hard hats are handed out at the door because the carving is still going on above your head. It is the most photographed thing in Pattaya and the one stop here that people write home about.
Khao Kheow Open Zoo
This is the one place on the list that is closer to your ship than Pattaya is, up in the hills behind Si Racha, north of the port rather than south of it. Adult entry is roughly 250 baht and the grounds are open eight to six. Open means open: the giraffes come to the roadside and the deer walk the paths. It is big, so buy the tram ticket and give it three hours if you want to see the far end.
Coral Island, Koh Larn
Be honest with yourself about the clock on this one. The public ferry from Bali Hai Pier costs around 30 baht and takes 40 to 45 minutes each way, and with the drive from the port at both ends that is most of your day spent moving. A chartered speedboat cuts the crossing to about fifteen minutes and makes the day work, at whatever the boatmen quote on the pier that morning. The water is the best within reach of Pattaya, so if the sea is why you got off the ship, take the speedboat.
Mermaid Café
It opens mid-morning and stays open late, and it is on Pratumnak Hill, so it slots in after the Big Buddha and the viewpoint without adding a leg to the drive. The room is done out as an underwater one, and the seating runs out towards the water with a long view down the coast. This is a café rather than a sight, worth an hour, a cold drink and the photographs. The tables at the edge fill up in the late afternoon.
Laem Chabang to Bangkok and back in a day
Bangkok is about two hours from the port in normal traffic, and the run back has stretched to three on a bad afternoon. That is four of your eight hours gone before anybody gets out of the car, and the traffic does not reliably hand the other four back.
For most one-day calls, Pattaya is the better use of eight hours. If you want Bangkok anyway, and plenty of people do because it is the reason they came to Thailand, treat it as a two-stop day and choose two stops that sit next to each other. The first three below are within a few minutes' walk and one short ferry ride of each other, which is why they are first.
Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew
The dress code is what turns people away at the gate, so start there: shoulders and knees covered, nothing see-through, men and women alike. Cover-ups are rented at the entrance for a couple of hundred baht if you arrive wrong. Entry is around 500 baht and takes in Wat Phra Kaew and the Emerald Buddha. The ticket windows shut in the middle of the afternoon, well before the complex itself does, so this is a morning stop or it is nothing.
Wat Pho
A few minutes on foot from the Grand Palace exit, which is the entire reason it is the natural second stop rather than a separate outing. Entry is about 300 baht. The reclining Buddha runs 46 metres of gold leaf in a hall barely larger than it is, and the massage school in the grounds is the original one, still teaching and still taking people who walk in with an hour they had not planned.
Wat Arun
Straight across the river from Wat Pho on the Tha Tien cross-river ferry, a handful of baht and under five minutes. Entry on the far bank is roughly 200 baht and the prang is open eight to six. The steps up it are steep and shallow, so anyone unsteady is better off looking from the terrace. These three together are the only realistic way to see Bangkok in four hours, and doing them in this order means you queue for a boat once.
ICONSIAM and the riverside
The one on this list with a roof over it, which makes it the answer when the ship berths late or the sky opens. It runs ten in the morning to ten at night on the Thonburi bank, with no dress code to fall foul of, and the indoor floating market on the ground floor sells the same food as a real one without the heat. Boats cross from Sathorn Pier every fifteen or twenty minutes for about 12 baht. They used to be free and are not any more, so ignore any guide that still says so.
Chatuchak Weekend Market
The full market is Saturday and Sunday only, roughly nine to six. If your ship is in on a weekday, do not plan this one: most of the stalls will be shuttered and you will have driven two hours to look at their shutters. What does open every day is Or Tor Kor across the road, a covered fresh-produce market worth the stop on its own, with JJ Mall beside it. On a weekend, three hours will not be enough and you still will not have seen it all.
Jodd Fairs Rama 9
It does not open until five in the afternoon, so this one exists only for a ship with a late all-aboard, and that is the first thing to check. Everything else about it is easy: street food under strings of bulbs with a wall of towers standing behind them, and the volcanic pork ribs the whole market is known for. It is about twenty minutes from the old city if you have spent the afternoon at the temples, and it sends you back to the port fed.
Leaving the ship for good: a one-way transfer to Bangkok
The form below is for a different product, so it is worth saying plainly which is which. It prices a one-way private transfer out of Laem Chabang, to a Bangkok hotel, to Suvarnabhumi Airport or down to Pattaya, for passengers whose cruise ends here and who are not coming back to the pier. The 8-hour day package is not on that form and the fares it quotes are not the package fare. Book the package with the form at the top of this page.
The run into central Bangkok takes around two hours on Motorway 7, and about an hour to an hour and a half to Suvarnabhumi. If you are going the other way, towards the port on a sailing day, the same fares and the same driver work in reverse on the Bangkok to Laem Chabang transfer page.
Laem Chabang cruise day trip: frequently asked questions
Will we get back to the ship in time?
That is the question every cruise passenger asks and it is the one we plan the day around. You give us your all-aboard time when you book, and every stop that day is scheduled by counting back from that number, not by however the morning happens to go. The last leg is timed to get you through the port gate with room to spare, and if the day starts running long he will say so at the stop before the one that would cost you the ship. Give him the ship name and the date and he is at Terminal A1 for your disembarkation, not for a clock time you guessed at months ago.
How much is a Laem Chabang cruise day trip?
฿4,500 in a Family SUV and ฿5,500 in a Minivan. That is for the whole car, not per person, and it covers the round trip out of the port and back, 8 hours of the driver's day, the fuel, and the ฿450 the port charges for a car to come in and collect you. There is no sedan on this package.
Where exactly does the driver meet us in the port?
In the pickup area outside Terminal A1, the passenger building inside Laem Chabang, with your name on a board. You cannot walk out of the port to meet a car somewhere else. The terminal exits onto an industrial port road well over a kilometre from the public gate, so every passenger leaves the pier area by vehicle.
Is the Laem Chabang port charge included?
Yes. The ฿450 the port charges for a car to enter and pick you up is already inside the fare you see here, and nothing is collected at the barrier or added at the end of the day. It is the charge cruise passengers most often get caught by, because a driver who quoted without it has to ask for it at the gate.
Can we go to Bangkok instead of Pattaya?
Yes, and the price is the same, but read the arithmetic first. Bangkok is about two hours from the port in normal traffic and the run back has been known to take three, so four of your eight hours are gone before anyone gets out of the car. Pattaya is 25 km away, roughly 30 to 40 minutes, which leaves you the better part of six and a half hours on the ground. For most one-day calls Pattaya is the better use of the eight hours. Bangkok works if you treat it as a two-stop day and pick two stops that sit next to each other.
What happens if we run over eight hours?
Each hour past 8 is ฿500, the same figure in either vehicle, settled in cash with the driver at the end. It is never folded into the price the form quotes you, because that number is the 8-hour package you booked and we would rather it stayed honest. Tell the driver as soon as you can see the day running long.
How many stops can we make, and does the driver wait?
He waits, because that is exactly what you get when you book by the hour instead of by the trip. A car standing in a temple car park for forty minutes costs the same as a car moving. Stops are not counted or charged either. Four places in a day is normal, five or six is possible if they are close together, and the driver will tell you at the second stop whether the fourth is still realistic.
How do we pay?
Thai baht in cash, handed to the driver at the end of the day. Nothing is charged in advance and no card details are taken. We read every booking by hand and confirm the driver and the price back to you in writing before your ship arrives, and we need at least 12 hours' notice to put a car on it.