This island familiarisation tour has a very flexible itinerary where you are provided with a taxi and English-speaking guide, and can then do what you want. It is a good way to get to know the island, so many visitors choose to take this tour shortly after arrival.

This tour is an organised tuk-tuk ride to either (a) Koh Yao Noi's two best beaches or (b) to one of these beaches, combined with an evening restaurant visit or (c) to one beach and the fish farm and/or coconut farm or (c) to wherever you want to go.

You get an English-speaking guide and a tuk tuk for 6 hours, and you can go wherever you want.

Both beaches are usually deserted, even in the high season, so it's necessary to take along everything you need with you. We stop at the market en route to the beach so you can buy fruit, lunch, drinks and ice.

After the market, the next stop is Buddha beach. The land adjoining the beautiful and shady Budda beach is the property of a Buddhist foundation from Bangkok, who use it as a meditation base. Visitors are requested and required, please, to not sunbathe topless - the monks find this distracting, and completely incondusive to insightful and harmonious meditation.

Next stop is Had Yao beach. It is as much what Had Yao beach lacks, as what it has, that make it special: along with its 400 metres of white sand accessed via a picturesque jungle trail, its perfect swimming water and its shady trees, Had Yao Beach also benefits from the absence of any rubbish, buildings, hawkers, and often any other people at all.

The taxi rides along the sun-dappled little lanes to the beaches are, for many visitors, as much fun as the beaches themselves.

The tour optionally finishes up with a visit to a seafood farm, where guests can choose the seafood they wish to eat for dinner. The seafood farm may either be 100 metres offshore, or onshore. The visitor will choose which seafood farm to visit, after discussions with the guide about which will have the best selection of seafood at the time. Some of the offshore seafood farms charge a small additional fee to ferry visitors out to the farm, which is usually refunded if the visitor buys something.