What you actually need to know — quick answer
The White Lotus Season 3 filmed across Thailand between February and August 2024, with Koh Samui as the primary location, supporting scenes in Phuket, Bangkok, and Koh Phangan. The fictional “White Lotus” resort is a composite of multiple real properties — principally the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui (the main hotel exteriors and beach), with additional Phuket scenes at Rosewood Phuket, Anantara Mai Khao Phuket Villas, Cape Pawna Hotel, and Villa Amaravida. The Bangkok wraparounds were filmed in part at the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok. The most cinematic single sequence in the season — the Episode 4 yacht scenes — was shot in Phang Nga Bay, departing from Phuket Yacht Haven Marina. Phang Nga Bay is the exact destination Simba Sea Trips runs daily charters into from our base at Boat Lagoon Marina, the marina next door.
| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Filming dates | February to August 2024 |
| Primary location | Koh Samui (Surat Thani province) |
| Secondary | Phuket, Bangkok, Koh Phangan |
| Episode 4 yacht scenes | Phang Nga Bay, departing Phuket Yacht Haven Marina |
| Main “White Lotus” hotel | Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui (composite — multiple properties used) |
| Premiered | 16 February 2025 |
| Season 4 confirmed | Yes — France (HBO confirmed, filming TBD) |
| Can you visit by boat? | Yes — Phang Nga Bay yacht-scene waters are bookable as a day tour |
If you want to actually visit the Phang Nga Bay waters Season 3 filmed in, our Phang Nga Bay day tour is the join-in product (from ฿4,500 all-inclusive) and the luxury private Phang Nga Bay charter is the full-day private option that most closely replicates the on-screen experience. The rest of this article is the operator’s-eye guide to every confirmed filming location, organised by region.
Why a Phuket boat operator wrote this guide
I’m Paul Chappell, owner-operator of Simba Sea Trips. The company was founded in 2005 — twenty years this year — and holds Tourism Authority of Thailand licence 34/02111. We run small-group join-in tours and private speedboat charters out of Soho Pool Club at Boat Lagoon Marina on Phuket’s east coast. I’m a former international airline captain — Lead Captain on a Boeing Business Jet, former Chief Pilot, qualified Flight Instructor — with 23+ years of professional aviation safety training, and a commercial marine operator in Andaman waters since 2014. The full captain’s bio sits here.
Most White Lotus filming-location guides on the internet are written by travel-writers who haven’t been to Thailand, recycling the same Warner Bros. Discovery press release with no first-hand context. The yacht scenes in Episode 4 are the most distinctive visual moment of the season — and most guides skim over them with a single sentence. Those scenes were filmed in the exact waters we run our Phang Nga Bay charters through, in the karst archipelago between James Bond Island and the eastern Andaman coast, departing from the marina immediately north of our own base. This article covers every confirmed location grouped by region, but the Phang Nga Bay section below is where I can actually tell you something the travel-writers can’t — what those waters look like at first light, why the production chose them, and how to visit them yourself by boat.
Koh Samui — the primary filming location
Koh Samui carried the bulk of Season 3’s filming days. The fictional “White Lotus” resort is principally the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui on the island’s quiet north-western coast — the beach, the open-air villas with their plunge pools, and the cliff-side restaurant terraces seen across the season are real Four Seasons property. The hotel sits roughly 25 minutes from Samui’s main town of Chaweng and is now reachable directly via the dedicated transfer service the resort has added to handle the post-show interest.
Several other Koh Samui properties contributed to the composite. Anantara Lawana on Chaweng Beach and Anantara Bophut on the north shore both provided supporting scenes, as did the W Koh Samui at Maenam. The Wat Pu Khao Thong viewpoint and the Ang Thong Marine National Park ferry route also appear in establishing shots. For viewers planning a Thailand trip that mirrors the on-screen experience, Koh Samui is the obvious base — but the island is on the opposite side of the country to Phuket and requires a separate domestic flight (roughly 1 hour 10 minutes from Bangkok) or a long road-plus-ferry combo from the Phuket side. Pick one side or the other; don’t try to do both in a single short trip.
Phuket — Rosewood, Anantara Mai Khao, and the supporting hotel composite
Phuket carried a smaller but commercially relevant share of the filming, with three confirmed property locations. The Rosewood Phuket on Emerald Bay (Tri Trang Beach) supplied the dinner-restaurant scenes seen mid-season — the open-air cliff-edge dining with the Andaman in the background is Rosewood’s Ta Khai restaurant. Roughly 25 minutes north of Rosewood, the Anantara Mai Khao Phuket Villas supplied the Wellness Sanctuary interiors, including the spa room used for the Belinda character’s appointments in Episodes 2 through 4.
The other two confirmed Phuket properties are private villas: Cape Pawna Hotel on the island’s quiet south-eastern coast (used as “Victoria’s Dream,” the villa Belinda visits in Episode 6) and Villa Amaravida, a private cliff-edge villa near Naithon Beach (used as “Gary’s House” interior). Both are private hire properties — Cape Pawna runs as a small boutique resort and Villa Amaravida is a single-villa rental. Neither was filmed wholesale; they each supplied specific rooms and exterior shots stitched into the composite. Note: the legacy version of this page identified The Surin Phuket as a filming location. Per the Warner Bros. Discovery official location list, The Surin is NOT among the confirmed properties used in Season 3 and we’ve removed that attribution.
The Phang Nga Bay yacht scenes — Episode 4
This is the section the rest of the internet skims over. Episode 4 contains the yacht-party sequence — the scene where the boat departs at first light, the Ratliffs ride out into the bay, and the camera lifts off to show the karst-archipelago landscape that to anyone who hasn’t been to southern Thailand looks like CGI. It isn’t. That landscape is real, and it’s the exact archipelago Simba Sea Trips charters into daily.
The yacht used in the sequence departs from Phuket Yacht Haven Marina, the next marina up the east coast from our own base at Boat Lagoon. From there, the route into the bay tracks roughly north-east into Phang Nga Bay proper — past the Koh Yao islands, through the limestone karst maze, and eventually toward the area around James Bond Island and Hong Island (the Phang Nga one — there’s another in Krabi). The drone shots in the episode include the cluster of unnamed limestone monoliths roughly 12 nautical miles north-east of Yacht Haven — we cross those waters on every Phang Nga Bay departure.
What the production chose Phang Nga Bay for is what we tell guests on every trip out there: it doesn’t look like anywhere else in Southeast Asia. The hundreds of limestone karst islands, the calm protected bay waters, the way the morning light comes off the vertical cliffs — there’s a reason it became a UNESCO Tentative World Heritage candidate. The Episode 4 cinematographer made the same call.
You can do this route yourself. The bookable join-in option is our Phang Nga Bay day tour at ฿4,500 from, all-inclusive, departing Boat Lagoon Marina (verified live 2026-05-23). That’s the small-group, max-18-adults speedboat — same waters, group format. If you want the on-screen experience closer to as-seen — boat to yourself, route flexed to match sea conditions and your stops, sunset run — the luxury private Phang Nga Bay charter is the full-day private product, and the Phang Nga Bay sunset charter is the shorter premium variant focused on the golden-hour light. Either private charter replicates the on-screen yacht-day experience as closely as you’ll get without chartering an actual super-yacht.
Other Phuket-side locations — Bangla, Café Del Mar, Ya Nui, Ko Lawa Yai
Beyond the marquee hotel and yacht scenes, several other Phuket spots appear briefly. Bangla Boxing Stadium in Patong supplied the Muay Thai fight scene seen in Episode 3 — Bangla is a real working stadium with twice-weekly fight cards, and visitors can attend on the same nights the production filmed. Café Del Mar Phuket at Kamala Beach supplied the beach-club scene used as a Patong nightlife establishing shot. Ya Nui Beach on Phuket’s quiet south-western tip and Ko Lawa Yai (a small islet off the south coast) supplied additional secluded-beach exteriors. Of these, Ya Nui is the one most worth a side-trip for visitors on the south of the island — it’s a small calm-water cove between two larger headlands with consistently quieter sand than Karon or Patong.
Bangkok wraparounds — Mandarin Oriental and street-food sequences
The Bangkok scenes in Season 3 are bookend wraparounds rather than central to the plot. The arrival sequence and the hotel-lobby scenes used the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok on the Chao Phraya River — the Oriental was a deliberate choice for its century-plus heritage and its position as one of the most photographed luxury hotels in Southeast Asia. The street-food walking sequence cut into the same episode was filmed in Yaowarat (Bangkok’s Chinatown) and the riverside walks along the Chao Phraya. For travellers connecting through Bangkok on the way to the islands, an overnight at the Mandarin Oriental and a Yaowarat food evening is the easiest way to replicate the on-screen city moment.
How to visit the filming locations by boat
A practical guide for viewers planning a Thailand trip framed around the season:
- If you can only do one location: Koh Samui. The Four Seasons is the single most visually present location across all eight episodes. Fly direct from Bangkok (1hr 10min) or via Phuket with a domestic transfer.
- If you want the yacht-scene location: Phuket. Base on the island, then book a Phang Nga Bay charter from Boat Lagoon Marina (us) or Yacht Haven Marina (the production’s departure point — chartering a yacht direct from Yacht Haven is also possible but considerably more expensive than a speedboat day).
- If you want both: Three nights Koh Samui, two nights Phuket, with a domestic flight between. Don’t try to road-transfer between them — it’s a 7-hour drive plus a ferry.
- If you want the most on-screen-faithful boat experience: Book a luxury private Phang Nga Bay charter. The full-day route covers the same waters in the same light the production used; with a private boat you can stop where they stopped, which the group day tour doesn’t always allow.
A note on Season 4 and the closing window
HBO confirmed in early 2025 that The White Lotus will return for a fourth season — and the production has moved to France. Filming is expected to begin in late 2026 or early 2027. International attention on Thailand as a White Lotus destination will hold for roughly 12 to 18 months after Season 3’s broadcast and then shift to wherever Season 4 sets up. For viewers planning a Thailand pilgrimage timed to peak relevance, the natural window is now through mid-2027. After that, Thailand-as-on-screen-destination will recede; Phang Nga Bay as a place to actually visit by boat won’t.
If you’re planning a Phuket-based trip that includes the Phang Nga Bay yacht-scene waters, the bookable products are the Phang Nga Bay day tour (small-group, ฿4,500) and the luxury private Phang Nga Bay charter (full-day, private). For the wider context of where Phang Nga Bay sits in the Andaman archipelago and how it compares to Phuket’s other day-tour destinations, our Phang Nga Bay destination guide covers the broader picture.
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