Koh Yao

Ko Yao is a small island wedged between the Tak Bai River and the Gulf of Thailand, reached from Tak Bai town over the Saphan Khoy Roi Pi — the “100-Year Waiting Bridge” — in Narathiwat province. It’s not the well-known Koh Yao Noi/Koh Yao Yai island pair near Phuket; this is a separate, much smaller place in Thailand’s deep south, over 700 km away from those Andaman islands.

The bridge is the island’s defining feature and the reason most visitors come at all: a 345-metre wooden footbridge across the river mouth, now run alongside a newer concrete road bridge. Its name is local shorthand for how long residents waited — close to a century of asking — before a proper crossing to the mainland was finally built. Cross it and you’re on a low, sandy island fringed with rows of mangrove and a tan-brown beach, home to a Thai Muslim community that fishes and farms coconuts much as it always has.

The island’s other claim to fame is food: Tak Bai is known across the region for pla kulao, threadfin fish salted and sun-dried in the local style, along with fish crackers made from the same catch. Both are produced and sold by island households rather than packaged for a tourist market, so what you find depends on the day and the season’s catch. There’s no beach club or resort infrastructure here — this is a working fishing and farming community that happens to have a striking bridge and a quiet stretch of sand, not a built-out island destination.

Insider Tip: Time a visit for late afternoon, when the fishing boats come back in along the river and the light on the bridge and the water is at its best for photos.

Watch out: Narathiwat is one of Thailand’s four deep-south provinces under an active foreign-travel advisory over an ongoing separatist insurgency. Read the safety context on the province guide and check your own government’s current advice before committing to a Tak Bai trip.