Sorry for the Group Email

Just like that, we were in Bangkok again. This time, we stayed in the infamous backpacker district at Khao San Road. Khao San Road is ground zero for backpackers, a mecca of neon-lit go-go bars, ping-pong shows and 30p beers. For me, it was a catastrophe of shit. Bottom-dollar is all well and good, but, with tedious inevitability, the lowest price means the worst things, and so it is that Khao San has become a disaster of low-rent guesthouses with plastic walls and, in some cases, peepholes. The tuk-tuk drivers that line its streets offer rides for 10 baht an hour, and in return take unaware tourists on a grande tour of their friends’ gem shops and tailor stores.

Of course, from the time we arrived from Siem Reap till the time we left again, we were only there for 24 hours, so it’s entirely possible – if not downright probable – that I missed something crucial and that really Bangkok is like Mayfair without the price gouging. If someone out there likes it, do let me know and we’ll have another look.

What Bangkok excels at, though, is being the main travel hub for all of Asia. If you’re in Bangkok, you can get anywhere in the world in much less than 24 hours and, if you’re willing to be flexible, it will hardly cost a thing. So it came to pass that we found ourselves on a bus to Ko Phangnan.

Thailand’s southern islands are the stuff of legend. Powdery white beaches caressed by light blue water, with bamboo shacks on the waterfront selling Tiger for 50p a bottle. Shoals of outrageously-coloured fish flirting with divers and bungalows on the beach going for a song.

There may be islands in Thailand like this, but Ko Phangnan isn’t one of them. We paid 450 baht each for our combined bus and boat tickets (about seven quid), and were instantly asked for more than that for a taxi ride once we got off the boat. Taxis in Ko Phangnan are expensive. This is partly understandable – a good chunk of the island has unsealed roads, necessitating four-wheel drive cars if you want to go anywhere, particularly if you’re there at any point in the wet season (hi), which turns dirt tracks into sticky obstacle courses. But, partly, the taxis have a monopoly on transport; there’s no bus, so as long as the taxi drivers stick together on pricing, tourists have to pay what they’re asked.

The only way to get around it is if you rent a scooter. But we struggled to find anywhere that would rent us one with insurance, and our travel insurance policy specifically excludes accidental damage cover if it was done while riding anything mechanical. Then I saw a picture on the front page of a newspaper. My Thai’s not what you’d call fluent, so I can only guess at the caption. I think it was: “If you ride a scooter without insurance in Thailand, this might happen to you. Look at this guy, he’s screwed!”

The chap in the picture was screwed indeed. He was lying over his shattered scooter, his legs draped over the saddle. His head had come to rest over the front wheel-arch of a saloon car, and there was an atrocious smear of blood stretching from where his head had hit the car to where his head now lay. You should bear in mind that I’m no pathologist, but the man certainly looked dead.

Which is why we didn’t take a scooter anywhere. Instead we took taxis, and grumbled about the prices.

We found an only-mildly-overpriced bungalow, which lacked a flushing toilet but had charmingly friendly staff who regrettably couldn’t cook to save their lives. Had there not been an on-site restaurant this would not have been a problem.

Here’s the thing about the food in Thailand. It isn’t very good. Or rather, the places you’ll eat at as a tourist don’t serve very good food. This is a huge shame, because Thai food in a more general sense is delicious. But in every tourist town (which is most of the large ones in the north, and anything near a beach in the south), everything from curry to Pad Thai is fried to within an inch of its life, before being banned from going anywhere near anything spicy, and having all of the interesting flavours carefully removed. It’s actually a bit of an impressive feat, making something so lifeless. The saving grace was a restaurant nearby called the Red Moon, which served good food, albeit for even more money.

The reason Phangnan was so depressing (besides the generic answer, “tourism”, which doesn’t mean much and certainly isn’t an explanation) is its Full Moon parties. It used to be that these once-monthly parties drew a sensational number of people to the island. They’d arrive two days early to get wound up, there would be a peak in the middle when they drank cheap booze and got high on even cheaper drugs, and then they’d stay for a few days after to recover, before buggering off back to the mainland. It can’t have taken the Thais long to note that the arriving tourists brought with them a staggering amount of money, and so it came to pass that the full moon parties were supplemented with the half moon parties. Eventually these were supplemented with new moon and quarter moon parties, and now Hat Rin, Phangnan’s club paradise, welcomes a new boatload of tourists every weekend. It means that the island runs at or near full capacity every weekend of the month.

It also means it’s full of idiots. Our beach was full of wobbly Europeans and Brits in ill-fitting swimsuits. I saw a particularly captivating German couple, she hanging graphically out of a bikini, while his Speedo ate hungrily into his expansive buttocks. I wondered if they dressed in front of each other, and what kind of relationship you’d have that let you allow your significant other to go out in public dressed like that.

Ko Phangnan, and I realise this is coming a little late in the day, is beautiful. Its beaches are indeed made from fine white sand, and its waters are certainly blue. Towards the end of our stay we even found one or two other half-decent places to eat, although nothing that will guarantee a return. Eventually I decided that I had arrived in Phangnan in the wrong frame of mind. We’d spent an exhausting few days in Siem Reap before getting on the first bus to Bangkok. We’d kept moving around Khao San, then travelled for twenty hours to Phangnan. I arrived revved up and in a poor state of mind for vegetating on a beach. The people – wobbly, exposed flesh and all – just made it worse. Had I arrived in Phangnan for a honeymoon I would have loved it. The resorts are relatively cheap, there’s plenty of quiet for those who want it, and, as long as you can choke the food down, there can’t be any restaurants on the island that don’t provide spectacular views of the sunset. Take a good book and prepare to relax.

Dave is seeking dissenting voices. If you’ve been to Ko Phangnan and loved it, tell me why below. If you haven’t left in disgust, check out our southern Thailand pictures by clicking here for the Flickr set.