Ko Pha Ngan

I deliberately waited a little while before uploading our opinion of Ko Pha Ngan because if I had done it straight away, I may have been unduly harsh. Unfortunately the abiding memory of this island will be the loss of my daybag, and with it everything I hold dear - my gadgets. We lost the bag on the first day and the rest of the trip didn't get much better.

Ko Pha Ngan was the last of the islands we hit before returning to the mainland. It is a small island between Ko Samui and Ko Tao and is world famous for its monthly Full Moon Party. We weren't there for that, but we had timed it to be there for the half moon party. Things started badly when I realised that the actual half moon party is held in the jungle and not the beach like the others, however the travel guides were confident that the beach is also a good place to be for that night. One thing we realised about Ko Pha Ngan is that it is a long way behind the other islands in terms of development. Haad Rin which is where we chose to stay and the site of the main parties consists of about 3 streets, which you can walk round in about 10 minutes.

By the time we reached the island, I think we had become a little beached out - this was the 5th island in a row and no matter how nice the beaches are, after a while they all blur into one. In particular, the beaches of KPN suffer from comparison with other islands we had been to, particularly Samui. The Island was also VERY quiet.It was coming to the end of the season across most of tourist parts of Thailand as it was beginning to get very hot. But this was the first place we really noticed a drop off in people. There was the usual smattering of pubs, including the token Irish pub-bizarrely called the Outback Bar, but this one actually employed Irish staff, which gave it a genuine claim I guess. Even when we went there, there was never more than a half dozen people in the pub.

By the time the night of the half moon party came round, we had pretty much given up on the island and were looking forward to leaving. This feeling was compounded when we got to the beach to find a very lacklustre environment. 2 or 3 bars had put out there usual half moon party signs and a few of the bucket bars were open, but it still looked half empty .

We had initially planned on leaving 2 days after the ½ moon, but that was the start of the Thai New Year, and the boats were full (more on Thai New Year in the Kanchanaburi blog) so we left a day early. We weren't sad to leave, but I think we may have judged the island harshly. I'm sure if you go when its busy, and it's the first or only island that you went to, then it would be fine-however for us, it started badly and was "same-same" to everything we had seen before, only lacking a bit in places.

The next stop we planned was Kanchanaburi, which meant a LONG journey from the islands.