Questions about the canal boat

How much does it cost?

Between 16 and 26 baht, depending on how far you go. There are only six prices — 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26 — and the Marine Department publishes one of them for every possible pair of piers.

Counting piers to guess the fare does not work. Piers sit anywhere from about 100 m to 1.5 km apart, so the same number of stops can cost different amounts. From Pratunam, three piers west is 16 baht and three piers east is 18. The calculator on the front page gives the published price for any two piers.

Marine Department fare tool · checked 23 September 2026

Where do I buy a ticket?

There is no ticket booth. A conductor works their way down the boat and collects as you sit — tell them which pier you want. Cash is easiest, and PromptPay is accepted.

The QR code fixed near the seats is the Marine Department's fare checker, not a way to pay. It tells you what the fare to your pier should be.

Guides that tell you to buy before boarding are wrong.

Do I have to change boats?

Only if your journey crosses Pratunam. Pier 5 is where the Golden Mount line, piers 1 to 5, meets the NIDA line, piers 5 to 28. Anything spanning both is two boats and a short walk along the pier.

Does the change cost me twice?

No. The fare is set between where you get on and where you get off, and it covers the change. Tell the conductor your final pier rather than where you are changing.

What time is the first and last boat?

It depends on which way you are going and what day it is. There are four schedules, and Saturday and Sunday are not the same as each other.

The earliest departure anywhere on the canal is 05:30, westbound from Wat Sriboonreung on a weekday. The latest is 20:30, eastbound from Pratunam, also on a weekday. The full table is on the front page.

The catch worth knowing: the last westbound boat leaves Wat Sriboonreung more than an hour before the last eastbound boat leaves Pratunam. An evening out at one end of the canal does not come home the way it went.

Marine Department printed timetable, sections 3.3 · checked 19 September 2026

How long will it take?

Nobody publishes run times for this service, so the figure on the front page is an estimate from the number of stops, shown as a five-minute band and labelled as an estimate.

What moves it is not traffic. It is how long each pier takes to load, which is why the rush hour is slower even though the canal is empty of anything else.

Where does the route start and end?

Panfa Leelard in the west, by the Golden Mount and walkable from Khao San Road, to Wat Sriboonreung in the east, past Bangkapi. Twenty-eight piers.

That is 17 km measured along the canal itself. In a straight line the two ends are 15.8 km apart, which is how much of the city the boat cuts across.

Pier coordinates from Bangkok Metropolitan Administration open data · checked 12 September 2026

What are the Golden Mount and NIDA lines?

The operator's names for the two halves. Golden Mount runs piers 1 to 5, Panfa Leelard to Pratunam. NIDA runs piers 5 to 28, Pratunam out to Wat Sriboonreung. One canal, one fare table, two boats.

Which piers connect to the BTS, MRT or Airport Rail Link?

• Sapan Hua Chang — BTS Ratchathewi
• Pratunam — ARL Ratchaprarop
• Chitlom — BTS Chit Lom
• Asoke-Petchaburi — MRT Phetchaburi and ARL Makkasan
• Ram 1 — ARL Ramkhamhaeng
• The Mall Bangkapi — MRT Bang Kapi
• Bangkapi — MRT Yaek Lam Sali

These are the rail stations nearest each pier. You walk between them.

Checked 12 September 2026

Is this the boat to the Grand Palace and Wat Arun?

No. Those sit on the Chao Phraya river, which is a different waterway with a different operator. The canal boat runs east to west across the middle of the city and stops at Panfa Leelard without going out onto the river.

Panfa Leelard is the closest it gets to the old town, and from there the temples are a walk or a short ride.

Is it Saen Saeb or Saen Saep?

Both, and they are the same canal. The Thai word ends in บ, which at the end of a syllable is said as an unreleased p. Transcribe the sound and you get Saep. Transcribe the letter and you get Saeb.

Sansab and San Sab are the same word again. Thai government material in English uses more than one of these, sometimes on the same page. Search for whichever you like.

Are you the boat operator?

No. Not the operator, not the Marine Department, not anybody's agent. There is no relationship with any of them and nothing here is official.

The boats are run by บริษัท ครอบครัวขนส่ง (2002) จำกัด, Family Transport (2002) Co., Ltd., who have no idea we exist. We are an independent aggregator: we read the public sources ourselves, compare them against each other, and publish what they actually say.

Where do your numbers come from?

Thai government documents first and English writing last. Thailand does not reliably update information in English, and what is out of date gets copied.

Every number here carries the date we last checked it against its source, not the date the page was built. Rebuilding the site does not move those dates.

Where two official documents disagree, and they do, we say so instead of picking the tidier one. If we cannot source something it is not here, which is why there is no number above for how often the boats come.

Why is your fare different from other sites?

Two reasons, and they compound.

The fare moves. It is tied to the diesel price and is re-set a few times a year, so any figure is a snapshot — see the note at the foot of this page.

And most English pages about this canal are working from a 2018 copy of the operator's old website, which went offline in 2019 and whose domain now serves spam. Figures like 8–22, 10–20 and 15–25 are still circulating from it.

Can I reuse this?

Yes. Search indexing, AI input and AI training are all granted in robots.txt, and there is an llms.txt written for machine readers with the full pier list, the fare matrix and the timetable in plain text.

A link back is appreciated and not required. Check the date next to a number before you republish it.