Koh Samui Time

Koh Samui is located in Gulf of Thailand – part of Thailand, positioned near the south of the country, part of the province of Surat Thani.

Writing from a personal point of view, as a British person, I always think of the time as compared to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In a sense I don’t feel too guilty about this as GMT is used as the standard measure of time throughout the world.

Within British summertime Thailand, and therefore Koh Samui is six hours ahead of the UK (GMT) and in the northern hemisphere’s winter it is seven hours ahead. I was initially surprised by this and slightly embarrassed that I wasn’t aware that Thailand has no winter or summertime. As an ignorant Brit I had been unaware that other parts of the world do not necessarily operate the same system as we do. Once I was made aware of this fact, it was immediately obvious why. I had previously been aware that our own winter and summertime was purely based on the fact that we are so far north in the UK we need to adjust our clocks in the winter in order to create more daytime light at convenient times. We often forget in the UK that we are so far north, that were it not for the Gulf Stream warming our shores we would in fact have even more miserable weather than we already do. Thailand and therefore Koh Samui – which is far south for Thailand – is so near the Equator that it does not have the same problems of changeable seasons and daylight hours. The daylight hours are pretty much constant all year round, there is of course a rainy season in this part of the world, but all in all Samui allows you to relax all year round with consistent daylight and weather – hence the consistent measuring of time.