One island with two names — registered as Koh Pu, 19.28 sq km, Krabi’s third largest. Three villages, 3,297 people as at January 2565. One scheduled boat each way per day from Krabi at 09.40 and back at 13.00, 900 baht. No bridge, no hospital and no secondary school anywhere in the sub-district. The island is coded to Mu Ko Lanta National Park in the national register — a fact to have checked against the decree before you buy anything.
Two names, and why you need both
Almost everything written about this island calls it Koh Jum. Thai government records mostly do not — and the disagreement is not sloppiness, it is two systems describing the same rock. The Khlong Khanan SAO states on its own page that Koh Jum is also called Koh Pu, and that the island holds three villages: Ban Koh Pu, Ban Koh Jum and Ban Ting Rai. The Koh Sri Boya SAO, which actually governs it, names the island in its own statutory plan as a single unit — Koh Pu - Koh Jum — with three villages and 3,297 residents, as at 13 January 2565.
The national island register kept by the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources does something different again: it carries two separate rows.
| Island, as the register names it | Area | Responsible unit in the register |
|---|---|---|
| Koh Pu | 19.280 sq km | Mu Ko Lanta National Park |
| Koh Sri Boya | 15.057 sq km | Local administrative organisation |
| Koh Hang | 14.492 sq km | Local administrative organisation |
| Koh Jum | 0.201 sq km | Local administrative organisation |
All four sit in Tambon Koh Sri Boya, Nuea Khlong district, Krabi. The register names Koh Pu as the third largest island in the province, after Koh Lanta Yai and Koh Lanta Noi — and then, two lines further down the same page, lists Koh Jum among Krabi’s notable islands. One government page, both names, no reconciliation. The practical instruction is simple: when you search any Thai record for this island — title, planning, park boundary — search Koh Pu as well as Koh Jum, or you will conclude that something does not exist when it is merely filed under the other name.
The national park question, stated as precisely as we can
In DMCR’s register the responsible-unit column is coded, and the page publishes its own legend: 1 is the local administrative organisation, 2 is Mu Ko Lanta National Park, 3 is Hat Noppharat Thara and 4 is Than Bok Khorani. Koh Pu is coded 2. Koh Sri Boya, Koh Hang and most of the other islands in the same sub-district are coded 1, so this is a distinction the dataset is drawing on purpose rather than a default applied to the whole area. DMCR records Mu Ko Lanta National Park itself as 135 sq km, declared 15 August 2533.
What we could not do, and will not pretend otherwise. We could not open the royal decree that established Mu Ko Lanta National Park, so we cannot quote whether Koh Pu or Koh Jum is named in its text. The Department of National Parks’ own sites and the Royal Gazette archive refused every route we tried. Read the park status above as a determination recorded in a government register, not as decree text we have verified. For anyone considering property here, that is exactly the gap a Thai lawyer should close first. The National Park Act B.E. 2562 is explicit on why the boundary is the whole question: section 6 requires that land declared as a national park be land carrying no document of ownership or of possessory right under the Land Code or any other law held by any person, other than land of a state agency, and section 19(1) prohibits any person inside a national park from holding or occupying land, building, clearing or burning.
Getting there: one road that ends at a pier, one boat a day
The local route is a road and then a boat. Khlong Khanan SAO records that Highway 4036 runs 24 km from Nuea Khlong district and ends at Ban Laem Kruat in Moo 8, and Koh Sri Boya SAO records that boats run from there to Koh Hang, Koh Sri Boya and Koh Pu - Koh Jum. That is the whole of what is officially published about it. No crossing time, no fare, no frequency, no last boat. The Krabi PAO even maintains a sailing-timetable page for its own pier, and it is empty. The only official crossing time anywhere in this sub-district belongs to the neighbouring island: the Krabi provincial PR office puts Laem Kruat to Koh Hang at about 20 minutes by longtail.
The scheduled route is better documented, because one operator carries Koh Jum as a destination in its own booking system. We queried that system directly on its own endpoints rather than trusting a reseller, and it returns a single vessel doing a daily round trip.
| From | To | Depart - arrive | Adult fare |
|---|---|---|---|
| Krabi (Klong Jilad pier) | Koh Jum | 09.40 - 11.15 | 900 baht |
| Koh Jum | Lanta (Sala Dan pier) | 11.15 - 11.45 | 500 baht |
| Lanta (Sala Dan pier) | Koh Jum | 12.30 - 13.00 | 500 baht |
| Koh Jum | Krabi (Klong Jilad pier) | 13.00 - 14.30 | 900 baht |
Read the times carefully and you can see it is one boat: it arrives at Koh Jum at 11.15 southbound, continues to Sala Dan, comes back, and leaves Koh Jum for Krabi at 13.00. Miss the 13.00 and there is no second sailing. The same operator’s ferry product returns no Koh Jum sailings at all — this is a speedboat route only. Fares and times are dated to the day we queried them and are not a published tariff, so confirm before travelling.
The Krabi end is the PAO’s own Pak Khlong Jilad pier, built between 2543 and 2544 for 144,448,763.30 baht, 12 metres by 51, which handled 376,154 passengers in 2568.
Who lives here, and on what
Tambon Koh Sri Boya counted 5,115 people across 1,737 households as at 2 December 2564, plus an estimated 1,091 unregistered residents, and publishes its own figure that 93.1 per cent of the sub-district is Muslim. Its island-by-island breakdown, taken six weeks later on 13 January 2565, gives Koh Sri Boya 1,475, Koh Pu - Koh Jum 3,297 and Koh Hang 501. Those two counts are from different dates and do not reconcile exactly; we are giving each with its own date rather than adding them.
The livelihood mix is not what the island’s reputation suggests. The SAO records 46.49 per cent in agriculture, principally rubber smallholding, ahead of 41.43 per cent in fishing, with 6.37 per cent trading. Koh Jum is usually described as a fishing island; by its own council’s numbers it is a rubber island that also fishes.
Schooling is the constraint a family will feel. There are six schools in the sub-district, three of them on this island — Ban Koh Pu in Moo 2, Ban Koh Jum in Moo 3 and Ban Ting Rai in Moo 5 — and all of them are primary. No secondary school is listed anywhere in the sub-district. There are seven mosques, one per village, and no Buddhist temple in the list. The SAO’s own office is not on the islands at all: it sits at 230 Moo 8 in Tambon Khlong Khanan, on the mainland.
On hazards, the SAO ranks windstorm first, ahead of drought, epidemic, flood and earthquake or tsunami, and notes that access by agencies coming to help is itself a risk factor. Tsunami warning towers have been installed by the Krabi provincial disaster office with annual drills, and the plan observes that the Phi Phi group screens the sub-district, buying evacuation time.
Healthcare, power, and the honest gaps
The sub-district’s own plan states there are two health service facilities for seven villages across three inhabited islands, and both are health-promoting hospitals — one at Ban Koh Jum in Moo 3, one at Ban Sri Boya in Moo 6. There is no community hospital anywhere in the sub-district. There is a rescue centre on this island with its own radio callsign and frequency, and a police station in Moo 3. And there is the escalation clause, which we quote because it is the clearest single sentence about island life we found: where a village cannot be reached by road or by boat, support is to be requested from military or police helicopters in or near the area. No scheduled night boat, no ambulance boat.
On utilities, the SAO’s asset table lists both an electricity and a water entry for each of the three villages on this island. The totals line reads six electricity entries and seven water entries across seven villages — and the village without electricity is Koh Hang, not Koh Jum. What that neighbouring island demonstrates is why the distinction between “has electricity” and “has mains electricity” is worth pressing: the Krabi provincial PR office reported in 2564 that Koh Hang had been without power for over a century, that household solar of 150 watts had been supplied from 2548 giving just 130 units, and that on sunless days and through the rainy season there was no power at all, with some households using lamps or candles. Koh Jum is in a different position — but no document we could reach says whether its supply is PEA mains, an island grid, or scheduled generator hours, so we are not going to tell you it is 24-hour mains.
- Whether the royal decree naming Mu Ko Lanta National Park includes Koh Pu or Koh Jum. The park coding above is from DMCR’s register only.
- Any crossing time, fare, frequency or last boat for the Laem Kruat local route — the route residents actually use. The Krabi PAO’s own timetable page is empty.
- Whether the scheduled ferry stops offshore for a longtail transfer. This is widely repeated; we found no official or operator source describing it, so we have not stated it.
- The mainland referral hospital. Neither Nuea Khlong Hospital nor Krabi Hospital appears anywhere in the sub-district’s 20-page plan.
- Whether the island’s electricity is mains or generator, and whether it is 24-hour; and whether the water entries are piped mains, village wells or rainwater.
- A village-by-village population breakdown, and any provincial order suspending boat services in named months.
- An internal inconsistency we are not smoothing over: the SAO gives its own area as 55.47 sq km or 15,032.26 rai. Those two figures do not describe the same area — 15,032 rai is about 24 sq km. We report both as published and rely on neither.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, and the government's own records say so in two different ways at once - which is worth understanding before you look at a title deed. Khlong Khanan SAO's own page opens by stating that Koh Jum is also called by another name, Koh Pu, and that the island holds three villages: Ban Koh Pu, Ban Koh Jum and Ban Ting Rai. The Koh Sri Boya SAO's own statutory disaster plan goes further and names the island as a single hyphenated unit, Koh Pu - Koh Jum, with three villages and 3,297 residents. So locally it is one island. But the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources' national island register carries two separate rows: Koh Pu at 19.280 sq km, and Koh Jum at 0.201 sq km. In the register, the large island everyone means when they say Koh Jum is recorded as Koh Pu, and Koh Jum is a fifth of a square kilometre. The same DMCR page even names Koh Pu as the third largest island in Krabi in one paragraph and lists Koh Jum among the province's notable islands two lines later. If you are searching any government record for this island, search both names.
The government's own register says part of it is, and we could not read the decree that would settle it. This matters enough to state carefully. DMCR's island register has a responsible-agency column, and its legend gives 1 for the local administrative organisation, 2 for Mu Ko Lanta National Park, 3 for Hat Noppharat Thara and 4 for Than Bok Khorani. Koh Pu - the 19.28 sq km island - is coded 2, Mu Ko Lanta National Park. This is not a blanket coding of the area: Koh Sri Boya, Koh Hang and most other islands in the same sub-district are coded 1, so the register is drawing a deliberate distinction. Mu Ko Lanta National Park itself is recorded by DMCR as 135 sq km, declared on 15 August 2533. What we could not do is open the royal decree that established the park and check whether Koh Pu or Koh Jum is named in its text; the Department of National Parks' own web estate and the Royal Gazette archive both refused every route we tried. So treat park status as a determination recorded in a government register, not as decree text we have read - and if you are buying, treat it as a reason to have the boundary checked against the decree before anything else. BAANLYY is a listing portal, not a law firm, and this is not legal advice.
Two ways, and only one of them is documented in any detail. The local route is by boat from Laem Kruat pier: Khlong Khanan SAO records that Highway 4036 runs 24 km from Nuea Khlong district and ends at Ban Laem Kruat, and Koh Sri Boya SAO records that boats go from there to Koh Hang, Koh Sri Boya and Koh Pu - Koh Jum. Neither publishes a crossing time, a fare, a frequency or a last boat, and the Krabi PAO's own sailing-timetable page exists but is empty. The one official crossing time we found anywhere in this sub-district is for the neighbouring island: the Krabi provincial PR office puts Laem Kruat to Koh Hang at about 20 minutes by longtail. The scheduled route is a speedboat, and one operator publishes it in its own booking system: Krabi's Klong Jilad pier at 09.40, arriving Koh Jum 11.15, 900 baht an adult, continuing to Sala Dan on Koh Lanta at 11.45 for 500 baht; then the same vessel back, leaving Sala Dan at 12.30 and Koh Jum at 13.00. That is one boat in each direction per day. The same system returns no ferry sailings for Koh Jum at all - only the speedboat product. Fares and times are dated to the day we queried them, not to a published tariff.
Some do, and there is an official record of it - just not a published notice. The Krabi PAO publishes monthly passenger statistics for its Pak Khlong Jilad pier, broken down by operator, and for 2568 two of them show a dash for the monsoon months: Lanta Super Concord recorded no passengers at all from May through October, resuming in November, and Satun Pak Bara recorded none from May through November. The same table shows Andaman Wave Master and PP Supakij Thongkerd carrying passengers in every month of the year. Consistent with that, the operator that serves Koh Jum returned its 09.40 sailing for every low-season date we tested. So the honest answer is that this is an operator-by-operator matter rather than a seasonal shutdown, and the pier's own passenger counts are the best evidence available. The Thai Meteorological Department puts the southwest monsoon over Thailand from about mid-May to mid-October. The Koh Sri Boya SAO ranks windstorm as the single highest natural hazard in its own risk assessment, above drought, disease and flood, and names access by rescue agencies as a risk factor in itself.
There is no hospital on the island, and the sub-district's own plan is unusually direct about the fallback. The whole of Tambon Koh Sri Boya - seven villages across three inhabited islands - has two health facilities, and both are health-promoting hospitals rather than community hospitals: one at Ban Koh Jum in Moo 3, one at Ban Sri Boya in Moo 6. There is no community hospital anywhere in the sub-district. There is a rescue centre on the island, Ban Koh Jum, with its own radio callsign and frequency, and a police station in Moo 3. For anything the health station cannot handle, the plan's escalation clause reads that where a village is in crisis and cannot be reached by road or by boat, support is to be requested from military or police helicopters in or near the area. That is the documented last resort. The plan sets out no scheduled night boat and no ambulance boat. We searched the full 20-page plan for the names of Nuea Khlong Hospital and Krabi Hospital and found neither, so we cannot tell you officially which mainland hospital receives a referral - and on an island with no bridge, that is a question worth asking locally before you move.
It has both recorded as assets, and no official document we could reach says what kind. The Koh Sri Boya SAO's own infrastructure table lists an electricity asset and a water asset for each of the three Koh Pu - Koh Jum villages, Moo 2, Moo 3 and Moo 5. The table's totals line reads six electricity and seven water across the seven villages, and the village missing an electricity entry is Koh Hang, not Koh Jum. What no official source states is whether Koh Jum's supply is a mains connection from the Provincial Electricity Authority, an island grid, or scheduled generator hours - so we are not going to tell you it is 24-hour mains. The neighbouring island shows why this is not a pedantic distinction: the Krabi provincial PR office reported in 2564 that Koh Hang had gone without electricity for more than a century, that the Ministry of Energy had supplied 150-watt household solar since 2548 giving only 130 units, and that on sunless days and through the rainy season there was no power at all, with some households using lamps or candles. Ask the specific house. The same table also records no waste disposal site, no bus service and no telecommunications entry for the sub-district.
Related guides
- Krabi — the province, the airport and the pier every scheduled boat leaves from.
- Koh Lanta — thirty minutes further south on the same boat, and a far deeper set of services.
- Cost of living on Koh Lanta — the nearest island where the numbers are actually documented.
- Moving to Krabi — the mainland practicalities behind a move to any island in this province.
- National parks in Thailand — what park designation means for land, fees and building.
- Leasehold versus freehold — the first question on an island where park boundaries are unresolved.
- Koh Phi Phi — the island group that shelters this one from the open sea.
- Island living in Thailand — how the islands differ on the things that decide a move.
One boat a day, and three thousand people who plan around it
Koh Jum is as quiet as Thai island life gets while still having a school, a clinic and a scheduled boat. If that is what you are looking for, start with what is listed along the Krabi coast.
Sources & References
- Koh Sri Boya Subdistrict Administrative Organisation - its own disaster prevention and mitigation action plan for 2564-2570, which names the island as Koh Pu - Koh Jum with three villages and 3,297 residents, gives the sub-district population of 5,115 as at 2 December 2564, states plainly that there is no bridge between the islands or to the mainland, lists the two health-promoting hospitals with their coordinates, the six schools, the seven mosques, the electricity and water assets village by village, the rescue centres and radio callsigns, and the escalation to a military or police helicopter when neither road nor boat can reach a village
- Department of Marine and Coastal Resources - the national island register for Krabi province, which lists Koh Jum and Koh Pu as two separate rows (0.201 sq km and 19.280 sq km), names Koh Pu the third largest island in Krabi, and assigns Koh Pu to Mu Ko Lanta National Park while assigning Koh Jum to the local administrative organisation
- National Park Act B.E. 2562, published in the Royal Gazette volume 136 part 71 Kor on 29 May 2019 and hosted here by the Department of Lands - section 6, which requires that land declared as a national park be land carrying no document of ownership or of possessory right under the Land Code or any other law held by any person, other than land of a state agency; and section 19(1), which prohibits any person inside a national park from holding or occupying land, constructing, clearing or burning
- Khlong Khanan Subdistrict Administrative Organisation - its own page for Koh Jum, which states that Koh Jum is also called Koh Pu and that the island holds three villages: Ban Koh Pu, Ban Koh Jum and Ban Ting Rai
- Khlong Khanan Subdistrict Administrative Organisation - its own basic information page, which records that Highway 4036 runs 24 km from Nuea Khlong district and ends at Ban Laem Kruat in Moo 8, the pier that serves the islands
- Krabi Provincial Administrative Organisation - the PAO's own Pak Khlong Jilad passenger pier: its construction between 2543 and 2544 at a cost of 144,448,763.30 baht, its dimensions of 12 by 51 metres, and its published monthly passenger statistics naming each operator using the pier, which show two operators recording no passengers at all through the southwest monsoon months of 2568 while two others ran every month
- Andaman Wave Master Co., Ltd. - the operator's own booking system, which carries Koh Jum pier as a destination and returns a single daily speedboat in each direction: Krabi Klong Jilad 09.40 to Koh Jum 11.15 at 900 baht an adult, Koh Jum 11.15 to Lanta Sala Dan 11.45 at 500 baht, and the same vessel returning. We queried the operator's own endpoints directly and confirmed that its ferry product returns no sailings for Koh Jum at all
- Government Public Relations Department, Krabi - its report on Koh Hang in the same sub-district, which records that the island had no electricity for over a century, that the Ministry of Energy supplied 150-watt household solar from 2548, that the supply fails on sunless days and in the rainy season, and that a longtail crossing from Laem Kruat pier takes about 20 minutes
- Thai Meteorological Department - the national monsoon calendar: the southwest monsoon over Thailand from about mid-May to mid-October, the northeast monsoon from mid-October to about mid-February, and the note that the south's east coast receives more rain than its west coast
Primary and official sources are cited above. Government rules, fees and procedures in Thailand change over time and vary by office; always confirm current requirements with the relevant authority before relying on them. BAANLYY never takes paid placement in editorial content.
