8,400.
from Naton on Ko Samui to Tong Sala.
TAT, Surat Thani Tel: (0-7728-8818).
daily.
Ko Pha Ngan is 15 km (9 miles) north of Ko Samui, and is two-thirds its size. The island has the same tropical combination of powdery beaches, accessible coral reefs, and rugged, forested interior. Budget travelers come to enjoy a bohemian life, staying in rattan huts beside idyllic bays. The island is much less developed for tourism than Samui, due mainly to its bad road system. Much of it is accessible only by sea or along rutted tracks by pickup truck.
Ko Pha Ngan beach
This town is the entrance port to Ko Pha Ngan, and, like Naton on Ko Samui, acts as a service town with a bank, post restante, supermarket, travel agent, and photoprocessing store. Next to the pier, an armada of songthaews waits to take visitors around the island.
The greatest number of bungalows on the island is at Hat Rin, located at the southeastern tip, 10 km (6 miles) from Tong Sala. It has become a popular destination with backpackers, many of whom now consider Samui’s resorts to be too commercialized. Hat Rin has two wide beaches flanking the headland. Its accommodations are often fully booked for a week either side of the monthly full moon beach party, which starts after dark and goes on beyond sunrise.
A strong smell of dried, salted fish emanates from Chalo-klam’s storefronts. Asian visitors often stop here to buy fish after visiting the revered Chao Mae Koan Im shrine in the center of the island. In Chaloklam, fishing-related activities such as mending nets and gutting fish coexist with shop-houses selling pizza and other tourist snacks. The beaches near the town tend to be rather dirty but improve farther to the east, especially as far out of town as Khom beach.
Although the majority of the beaches are on the east side of the island, most are accessible only from a rough track running along the coast. The twin bays of Tong Nai Pan Noi and Tong Nai Pan Yai in the northeast offer arguably the most attractive scenery. They can be reached by pickup truck from Tong Sala or, between January and September, by long-tail boats, which sail from Maenam beach on Ko Samui.
Tansadet, 3 km (2 miles) to the south, is the island’s biggest stream and waterfall. It owes its name, “royal stream,” to the ten visits King Chulalongkorn made between 1888 and 1909. Since then most Thai monarchs have left large stone inscriptions on rocks alongside the stream – finding the signatures requires scrambling among the rocks. The stream has two falls, Sampan and Daeng. Both are suitable for swimming, but heavy rainfall from September to December makes the stream bed too dangerous to walk along.
