Banana Beach earned its name not from imported fruit but from the crescent curve of its 220-metre shoreline, which bends like the arc of a yellow giant when viewed from the limestone ridge above. Koh Hey—locally called Coral Island—sits eight kilometres southeast of Phuket's Rawai coast, a twenty-minute speedboat crossing that ferries day-trippers, snorkelers, and parasailers to one of the Andaman Sea's most accessible offshore playgrounds. The beach itself opened to organized tourism in the early 1990s, when a handful of Rawai fishing families began shuttling visitors in longtail boats. By 2005, the island's two main beaches—Banana Beach on the eastern flank and Long Beach to the south—had become fixtures on the Phuket day-trip circuit, with speedboat operators and hotel concierges adding the island to multi-stop itineraries that combined snorkeling, lunch, and water sports into single-day packages. Today, Banana Beach Koh Hey tour operators depart from Chalong Pier, Rawai Beach, and a cluster of smaller jetties along Phuket's southeastern coast. Most excursions bundle the beach with surrounding sites: the Blue Caves off the island's northern tip, the turtle feeding grounds near Koh Racha Yai, and the limestone karsts of Laganas Bay. Speedboat services run year-round, with departures concentrated between 09:00 and 11:00 to avoid the midday influx of group tours. The beach itself remains free to enter—no conservation fee is levied—but operators charge separately for equipment rental, lunch service, and guided add-ons. The island's shallow reef, which extends thirty metres from shore at a depth of two to four metres, supports hard corals, parrotfish, and occasional hawksbill turtle sightings, though visibility drops sharply during the monsoon months of May through October. Banana Beach's infrastructure is intentionally minimal: a cluster of bamboo sun shelters, a single beachfront café, and a water-sports booth that rents kayaks, paddleboards, and snorkel sets. No overnight accommodation exists on Koh Hey, and the island's generator-powered electricity runs only during daylight hours. The beach's sand is coarse coral rubble rather than silica, a characteristic of Andaman limestone islands, and the offshore shelf drops steeply beyond the snorkeling zone, marking the edge of the deeper channel that separates Koh Hey from the mainland. Tour packages that include Banana Beach typically allocate ninety minutes to two hours on-site, allowing time for a shallow-water swim, a snorkel drift along the reef, and a pause beneath the casuarina trees that line the beach's northern edge. The island's appeal lies less in its facilities than in its proximity—close enough to Phuket for a half-day trip, far enough to shed the coastal traffic and high-rise silhouettes that define Patong and Kata.