Back to Koh Phangan (Thailand) in 2024
JB absolutely wants to come back to Koh Phangan, the place where we spent 6 months during Covid. Because of the return of tourism, I’m afraid he’ll be disappointed and file it under “lost paradise,” but it’s better to face reality and accept that the “Covid Koh Phangan” no longer exists. Luckily for us, our beloved Koh Phangan still exists a little, especially in low season.
Part 1: Travel Journal
Part 2: Practical Tips
Part 1: Travel Journal
We take a speedboat from Koh Tao with the company Lomprayah. They offer to drop us at our hotel for 150THB/person. Handy! We get dropped off in front of Green Papaya Hotel (across from Haad Salad beach). I would have liked to be at the hotel next door, Salad Beach Resort, but it has terrible reviews and isn’t well maintained, so I prefer to spend 2 nights next door at Green Papaya Hotel. This hotel is known by everyone for its incredibly long pool. It’s a 4-star hotel. They used to have a great restaurant (which no longer exists).
We have lunch once at the hotel next door (Salad Beach Resort). It’s nothing special, but I’m really drawn to this slightly dated hotel. When I first visited, we passed by their pool and it smelled divinely of monoi oil. Today, that monoi scent is still there. A sense of well-being you can’t find anywhere else. Near the restaurant, there’s a big flowering tree. I don’t know what flower it is, but it changes color as it falls.
JB feels like he’s reliving a past life the moment we set foot on Koh Phangan. This island has a special energy that neither Koh Samui nor Koh Tao has. You immediately feel at home, and since we spent 6 months here, it feels like coming back home.
Our Scooter rental guy drops off our scooter and two helmets in front of our hotel. He asks for a $200 deposit, but we spent all our dollars in Bhutan, so we had to hand him a mix of New Zealand dollars and Thai bahts. Those 200 NZ dollars were picked up off the street in Buenos Aires by JB. He very often finds money on the ground. Recently, on Koh Tao, he found another 100THB on the ground. Once, he found a wallet with 3000 NZ dollars at a campsite, but we never found out what happened to it because we brought it to the front desk.
As soon as we have the scooter, we head straight to the restaurant Beach Garden to see Jérémie, our 5-star chef. He and his wife are over the moon to see us, especially since we didn’t warn them (I no longer have the Viber app). We must have some kind of connection because a few days later and we would have missed them. We’re glad to see that Beach Garden now has many more tables, many more servers, and they’ve done some work to add a beautiful terrace, lovely loungers, and hammocks on the beach and at the restaurant. It’s gorgeous! And the food is, of course, still delicious!
Off-plan villas
We learn that Jérémie is building beautiful villas with pools in Koh Phangan. Koh Phangan has 84% protected land (national park), so buildable land is quite limited. Jérémie invites us to eat at his place, a “show villa.” He shows me how he does the design, the little details in the bathroom, the kitchen, the furniture, the pool… how he positions the villa relative to the sun, the land… when it’s done right, you don’t notice any of that because nothing bothers you, but when a villa is poorly designed, you notice it right away. His villa is truly a dream villa, for families, or a retired couple wanting to live “in paradise.” His villas are always for sale here if you’re interested. The land alone will appreciate in value because buildable land is becoming scarcer due to the 84% forest rule. His company can help with financing and paperwork. I’m mentioning this not because he’s my friend, but because his villa is truly high quality and I would have been very interested if I had the cash. But we’re tapped out because we just took delivery of our studio in Nice.
Jérémie is someone I truly admire. Everything he does, he does with passion and to an exceptional standard. When he was a jeweler, he studied at the Boulle School, the equivalent of the Polytechnique for arts and crafts. The kind of school that only accepts the best jewelers, with exceptional dexterity, the kind of school that trains jewelers for Place Vendôme. When he opened his restaurant in Koh Phangan, it quickly became the best French-Japanese restaurant on the island, overlooking the most beautiful beach in Koh Phangan. We worked together on the Vietnamese spring roll recipe for his restaurant, and I learned from him the professional way to introduce a new dish to a restaurant. He taught me a lot about selecting ingredients. There’s a before and after Beach Garden, all other restaurants now seem bland to me 😀 Especially the beef tartars 😀 because at Jérémie’s, French products come straight from Rungis. And now he’s embarking on a project to build 100 (!!!) villas in Koh Phangan!
In short, a person who turns everything he touches into gold, through hard work, passion, constant learning, and perfectionism, he’s the kind of person I love to hang around. I admit he inspired me a lot when writing this article. I don’t have many friends because I only like perfectionists who have a multitude of passions, who can make important decisions quickly (because they know exactly what their priorities are), and those people aren’t numerous. I’m convinced that people who are alike all end up alone, because even at my leathercraft class in Vietnam, the students are also “obsessed” with haute couture, handmade goods, top-quality leather, etc. In fact, Jérémie immediately noticed that my bag had something special about it. Artisans notice everything!
We ask him why the atmosphere on Koh Phangan is so different from other islands, and he explains that Koh Phangan sits on a quartz mine, which explains the island’s extraordinary energy. It doesn’t accept just anyone (bad vibes), and people often want to come back to recharge.
During dinner at Jérémie’s, we discover a Thai dish that’s half hotpot, half BBQ—I’ve forgotten the Thai name. Then he has us taste some Armagnac from Darroze, rare and hard to buy. Chefs often have access to exceptional products the public doesn’t even know about, like me with my leathers from a certain tanner.
I take the opportunity to ask him questions about platinum, because I’m planning to get a custom platinum ring made (PT900 or PT950), and he tells me it’s better to start from a wax model rather than working from scratch, because the solder would have used a weaker alloy, negating platinum’s properties (this passage is for me, I’m putting it on the blog so I don’t forget, it’s okay if you don’t understand). Platinum, according to my jeweler, isn’t suitable for prongs, which really surprises me because Tiffany’s only uses platinum for the prongs on their rings, that’s why I prefer to get Jérémie’s opinion. Platinum is expensive, but the advantage is that few people use it, so for a custom ring, I only pay for the metal (often from recycling), not the labor costs.
Baan Tang Resort
We stop by “our hotel” near Chaloklum. This is where we spent 6 months. The owner and the Burmese employee who work there still remember us and really like us. They immediately give us a monthly rate even though we’re only staying 9 nights, on the condition that we pay for electricity ourselves. There’s a family bungalow left for us, which we pay 1166 THB/night for, half the price of Booking, with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It’s almost too big for us, but all the other bungalows and rooms are now fully booked months in advance. So, luckily, Koh Phangan still welcomes us one way or another. We can come “home” whenever we want.
We’re so happy for them. Especially since there are 3 family bungalows under construction at the back. Chaloklum is the most beautiful beach on the island, yet there’s a terrible shortage of housing because the fishermen hold on to their homes and don’t want to sell their land. It doesn’t surprise us that Baan Tang Resort is always full, especially since there’s a nice pool and it’s all clean.
When we left after 6 months in 2020, we gave them 2 office chairs, 1 desk, and an exercise bike, but none of the bungalows seem to be equipped with our stuff, so I think the owner sold them. Then again, it’s probably for the best, because if one bungalow had them and another didn’t, it would have caused jealousy.
E-foiling at Surfwing
I contact Surfwing on Instagram, where I learned to e-foil, because I can’t find them on Google Maps anymore. The owner tells me what happened with Google Maps, and since then, we’ve been able to recreate a new Google Maps pin for her. I’ve become a bit of a Google Maps expert, hahaha.
We opt for a 5-hour package each (12,500 THB). Since we’re not staying long, we take 1-hour lessons almost every day with our new instructor Dasha. We’re happy to find that e-foiling is like riding a bike—you don’t forget! The first hour is physically demanding (we keep falling!), but the habits and sensations come back by the second hour. From the 4th hour on, I can decide to fly or not at will. I still don’t handle turns perfectly, especially left turns, but we fall much less often and are in less pain.
I’m terrified of waves and depth, so when we went to the little rock far from Chaloklum, I stayed sitting. At one point, I totally freaked out and turned back, leaving Dasha and JB in the distance, hahaha. I’m super fearful, and to force myself to go a little further each day, I often take packages and pay everything in advance (like those 5 days of skiing in Montenegro for example). It’s my way of facing my fear.
But with the waves, I would have needed a few more hours to overcome my fear. The worst part is that between JB and me, I’m the better swimmer, hahaha 😀 The more advanced riders can do Koh Phangan – Koh Samui on an e-foil; I think that won’t be happening anytime soon. At least I’ll manage fine on a lake. At one point, I fell and thought I saw jellyfish; actually, it was the reflection of my own UV-protection shirt, hahaha 😛 The biggest obstacle is yourself; you have to push yourself. Sometimes no one attacks us, and we don’t dare move forward because we create fears all by ourselves.
Once, because of the waves, I went straight toward the corals and the board got stuck between them. I had to flip the board until there was enough depth. The corals left a few cuts on my foot that took two weeks to heal. So be careful, and if you have aqua shoes, it might be better.
Anyway, we get regular massages after our e-foiling lessons (400 THB/hour) here (เดือนนวดเพื่อสุขภาพ, Google Maps link), which I don’t mind at all 😀
During our stay, we enjoy the Saturday market in the town center, the Sunday market in Chaloklum, and the night market every day in Thongsala. It feels strange now to have to drive 10-15 minutes, whereas on Koh Tao, everything is at most 5 minutes away.
JB tries to go snorkeling at his two favorite spots, but the waves are way too strong and he risks hurting himself badly on big rocks. No regrets, we’ve done enough of that in Koh Tao.
Anyway, after reassuring ourselves that our friends and acquaintances are fine and their businesses are running smoothly, we leave Koh Tao, opting for the speedboat and a bus, VIP this time, to Bangkok. Departure is at 8:30 AM and we arrive in Bangkok, exhausted, at 8:30 PM. JB books us 2 nights at MGallery Muse. The service at this hotel is far inferior to that of VIE Mgallery Bangkok. The colonial style is a bit dandy, with trunks in the room and wooden trunks for drinks, it’s very pretty, but it lacks charm and is too small. Even the lobby doesn’t manage to “sell the dream” like other 5-star hotels in Asia.
We take the opportunity to have lunch with an old high school friend of JB’s; he’s Thai, a diplomat, and works for the United Nations. They hadn’t seen each other in 20 years! I learn a lot from how he conducts the conversation: revealing enough without getting into too much intimate detail, while staying authentic. A true diplomat.
Part 2: Practical Tips
- Best restaurant in Koh Phangan: Beach Garden. They also have Thai dishes, cooked by the chef’s wife
- Best hotel in Chaloklum: Baan Tang Resort
- e-foiling: contact Surfwing on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/surfwing.thailand/ they also have an office in Koh Samui.
