SOUTHEAST ASIA

Where to find the unspoilt Thailand of The Beach

You can still enjoy an old school Thai holiday: head to sleepy Ko Phayam and Ko Chang

Paradise found: Ko Phayam, near the Burmese border

There’s a problem at Thailand’s most brilliant beach hangout, Hippy Bar. The G string has broken on the acoustic guitar, making it tricky for the owner, Jim, to play his favourite Thai pop songs. He sits cross-legged in a bamboo chair opposite me, gamely plucking the five remaining strings.

Whatever I’d hoped for from Ko Phayam, an island 20 miles shy of the Burmese border — quiet stretches of sand, the bath-warm Andaman Sea, tracks winding through glossy jungle — a driftwood bar cobbled together by a Thai Hendrix lookalike hadn’t featured. The bar, which stands behind Ao Khao Kwai Beach, incorporates a makeshift collection of scrappy treehouses and a homemade galleon. It’s part Robinson Crusoe, part Pirates of the Caribbean.

Jim gives up on the two songs he knows and swigs a Leo beer. It’s been a painful 10 minutes for us both. Still, it could’ve been worse; the barman, Oat, only knows one song.


Just over 20 years since Alex Garland wrote The Beach, the quest for the ultimate Thai-island escape continues. The book inspired a gazillion backpackers to embark on their own hunt. Surely there must be somewhere they’d overlooked?

No strings: Hippy Bar, on Ko Phayam

Ko Samui, Thailand’s first fantasy island, now has rush-hour traffic and three branches of Tesco. Ko Phi Phi Don, backpacker heaven in the 1990s, has a Holiday Inn. And at Maya Bay, on neighbouring Phi Phi Leh (the stretch of sand where they filmed The Beach), you’re jostled by day-trippers pouting for selfies.

All provide perfectly good holidays in their own way. But I’ve come here to seek the castaway fantasy each represented three decades ago.

Following a tip-off from a Bangkok expat, I begin at the Trang Islands, south of Phi Phi. Ko Ngai and Ko Kradan are slivers of jungle and coral sand lapped by a sapphire sea, with no roads and no incessant whump-whump from bars. Instead, each island has a few beach hotels and, on Ngai, there’s a brace of sand-floored restaurants. I kick off my shoes when I arrive, then read, swim, paddle a canoe and gaze at a silvered seascape dotted with karst islets like dragon’s teeth. All very nice for a fly-and-flop, but with no resident islanders, they prove a bit ersatz for my liking.

Get away from noisy nightlife — and roads — on Ko NgaiGETTY

I should try Ko Muk, 40 minutes away, suggests a barman on Ngai. It looks the part as I arrive by boat. One half ends in Jurassic Park cliffs; the other has beaches and hamlets in the jungle. Its wild beauty makes it a sure bet for development, but that hasn’t happened yet, because most of the 500 families here are too busy fishing. For the moment, accommodation choices are limited to guesthouses and, rather unexpectedly, some posh huts on a finger of groomed white sand.

I’m the only tourist to disembark from the speedboat from Ngai. A chap called La says hello and, for a quid, offers to show me around on a Honda 50cc with a makeshift sidecar. How can I refuse?

We buzz past noodle stalls, banana trees and stilted houses in the mangroves, sea eagles circling in cobalt skies. Every family has a longtail fishing boat, La tells me, and there’s no crime. The road peters out at Had Farang — Foreigner Beach. Rubbish name, belter of a beach: a swathe of sand and teal sea between jungly hummocks, with a ramshackle bar for sundowners.

I rent a canoe at low tide and paddle round the corner to Tham Morakot. Emerald Cave is another winner. The crush of day-trippers across from the mainland, less so. Next!

Which leads me to Ko Phayam and Jim. Before Burma opened up, Ranong province was a cul-de-sac. Only ageing German hippies endured the tortuous dead-end route to Phayam: 12 hours on a bus from Bangkok, then two on a tubby public boat from a wharf reeking of fish. But since 2015, it’s been possible to fly to Ranong in just over an hour from Bangkok, then catch a private speedboat to Phayam in 45 minutes. The wharf still smells, mind.

You dock at a pier in Phayam’s village — little more than a few basic restaurants, a shop selling homemade items and a few scooter-hire joints. A temple nearby has a staircase of glittering green dragons, with gold Buddhas vanishing into jungle.

The village ticked off, you should rent a scooter — pretty much the only option. Lanes are channelled by cashew trees and rubber plantations, their trees bleeding a white sap with a sweet-sour aroma. Hopeful hippie enterprises tout massage and organic curry among the hibiscus. “Throw away your phone,” a sign reads. “It destroys our relationships.”

Everyone I meet — from the few hundred islanders to the expats who’ve come to escape the commercial grind of other islands — is committed to this ethos. “Most people don’t want modernity,” I’m told. “We want old-style, like 30 years ago.”

So, no building is higher than a coconut tree. Hot water and 24-hour electricity remain boasts. Nightlife means an ad-hoc party in a forest clearing. Sure, a newcomer such as the Blue Sky Resort provides bungalows more suited to the Maldives. But from the adjacent creek, Moken sea gypsies still come and go with the tides. You see them at night — whole families crowded on a longtail, their faces illuminated by an oil lantern.

Wild thing: Ko Muk is still relatively underdevelopedALAMY

Most of the action is at Ao Yai Beach. There’s friendly surf and board rental at Phayam Lodge, and beach huts amid the casuarina trees at Rasta Baby Bar. Twelve people are on the beach when I arrive — nine tourists and three local lads playing takraw, the keepy-uppy wicker-ball game.

That afternoon, I scoot north past Ao Khao Kwai — three miles of beach bookended by Phayam’s whitest sand in the south and by Hippy Bar in the north — to take a sketchy track to Ao Kwang Peeb. The beach is astonishing, a wild half-moon of sand beneath jungle throbbing with the electric buzz of insects. It’s all mine, except for a smiley fisherman called Nui, his two dogs and some monkeys.

And if that sounds remote, wait till you hear about neighbouring Ko Chang (not to be confused with its more developed namesake over in the Gulf of Thailand). It’s a refuge from “frenetic” Phayam. There are only beach huts. The majority of visitors are German-speaking refugees from the love generation. About half stay for more than a month. You understand why when you arrive on Ao Yai. One of the most beautiful beaches I’ve seen, it’s deserted save for three westerners and some dogs worrying a skink.

“It’s like Samui in the 1980s,” says Christa, a sixtysomething from Berlin. She’s in a hut rainbowed in flower-power murals, back for the 11th year.

I’m staying in a spotless beach hut at Resort Sawasdee. There’s a hammock out front, a bed with a mosquito net, a simple bathroom and an electric fan. When they kill the generator at 9.30pm, you open the shutters to the tropical sea breeze. What more do you need?

Unless you salute the sun at Om Tao Yoga, you read, swim or walk. If you’re keen, you can hike through the jungle to play Castaway on the south coast. I take a path inland and meet Soi thwocking coconuts off a tree. She sells me one for 50p and we sit to discuss the pace of life — “Not like Phayam,” she says, wrinkling her nose, as if Phayam were Samui — and the price of rubber. “Now only 41 baht one kilo — too low.” She has increased her workers’ wages, regardless. “We are one community on Ko Chang,” she explains.

I slurp fresh coconut milk and ponder. I’d come to Thailand in search of a simpler, slower-paced way of life — but hadn’t really expected to find it. Yet on Phayam and its neighbouring speck of land, among love-generation refugees and enthusiastic if limited singers, I’d found it.

I’m already plotting a return next year, and I’m intrigued to see how Jim has extended Hippy Bar. I’ve put some new strings in the post.

James Stewart was a guest of Ethos Travel, which has a nine-night Thai trip in high season from £1,567pp, B&B. The price includes four nights in both Ko Phayam and Ko Chang (Blue Sky Resort and Resort Sawasdee respectively), a night in Bangkok and all flights and transfers (020 7284 1888, ethostravel.co.uk). For more information, visit tourismthailand.org