Sand in My Shoes Beach Loft

Those who have visited Thong Nai Pan Noi will know that the perfect spot on the beach is in the middle, just past the monotony of the Rasananda spread of luxury bungalows and just before the fiefdom of Thong Tapan. It is the spot where Pong's used to be, and the Flip Flop Pharmacy. Now it is the Sand in My Shoes restaurant. To maximise the revenue from the superlative location they are now offering accommodation.

The Sand in My Shoes Beach Loft consists of 2 rooms in a building behind the restaurant for rent. One is the Family Room and the other is the Deluxe Double Room.

Family Room at Sand in My Shoes

The family room has a total internal space of 64 metres squared. It contains 2 double beds and 2 sofa beds and so theoretically could sleep a family of 6. There is a hot water bathroom with shower as well as a balcony. The room has air-con and cable TV.

The room has a modern decor with new furnishings. Hardwoods and neutral tones create a relaxing and stylish atmosphere. There is also a small open closet with a safe on the floor to store your valuables.

Room rates for the family room start at 8,500 Thai Baht a night. This price includes breakfast at the restaurant.

Deluxe Double Room at Sand in My Shoes

The cheaper deluxe double room has an internal space of 32 metres squared. There is a hot water shower, air-con and a cable TV. The room also has an adjoining balcony with sea views and table and chairs.

This room is finished to a high standard. While there are hardwood floors the walls are bare concrete. It gives the room a modern and minimalist feel and is a style popular in Thailand (although I suspect a style that will soon look dated).

Price per night for the deluxe double room start at 6,800 Thai Baht. This price includes breakfast at the Sand in My Shoes Restaurant.

Conclusion

These 2 rooms are somewhat on the expensive side. The same price can get you a private villa. However, they are just a stone's throw from the beach (in the picture you can see the rooms behind the beachfront restaurant). They are nicely finished and comfortable.

For some people staying next to a restaurant is convenient. For others it can be noisy, and although the rooms have their own entrances separate to the restaurant there could be issues for those who highly value their privacy. The restaurant normally stops serving food at about 10pm and is normally empty by midnight. It is a popular spot to eat and has plenty of great reviews. The good news for people booking to stay at Sand in My Shoes is that it is not a party spot with loud music, so you won't be kept awake all night by banging techno beats.

The staff are friendly and have garnered plenty of positive feedback  from guests staying in the rooms.

Click here to check availability for Sand in My Shoes

New 7 Eleven in Thong Nai Pan Noi

Thong Nai Pan Noi is going to get its first 7-11 shop. It is due to open early in 2018. Don't get too excited - internecine capitalism is not something frequently found in Koh Phangan. It is not likely to start a price war and a deflationary price spiral for tourist goods.

The new 7 Eleven is being built on the road at the back of the village that leads out to the main road. It is just past the bridge and opposite the big shop where you can buy vegetables, meat, large bottles of water and petrol.

Thong Nai Pan Yai already has a 7 Eleven located on the main road at the southern end of the beach. When news of this shop first spread through the local populace there were many who were expecting cheap beer, coffee and snacks. That was in 2009. These people were soon disappointed. The shop opened with no fanfare with prices ranging between 10% and 20% higher than the other 7 Eleven shops on the island. The business model is clearly not to undercut the competition but to charge as much as the market will stand. Besides you don't step on toes that way.

There are some items in the 7 Eleven in Yai and in Bantai and elsewhere on the island that are slightly different to those found in the local shops such as the coffee machine, the 7 Eleven sandwich (not for sandwich lovers) and the free hot water to make pot noodles. However, the large percentage of the wares found at the 7 Eleven in Yai are the same as those for sale in the local shops.

What attracts tourists to 7 Elevens is the fact that everything is marked with a price. The staff don't moan about breaking notes and they invariably add up your bill correctly and give out the right change. You can get a bit weary of asking the price for everything in advance and having to work out if your change is enough. 7 Elevens are convenient in Thailand, and it is a certain type of convenience. Tourists expect cheap prices, but if they don't get them they still come back because they like the hassle-free nature of a 7 Eleven in Thailand.

In Thong Nai Pan Noi the cheapest shop is Snoop Shop. It is opposite Jip Shop. It doesn't have sliding glass doors or neat displays. It is clearly a 'locals' shop. That is not to say that they don't welcome anyone into the shop. They have meat, vegetables, fruit and a range of everyday products. They have Thai snacks. They have beer and cheap water. You can find all kinds of useful things in the Snoop Shop especially if you can ask for it in Thai.

I suspect that Snoop Shop will be cheaper than the Thong Nai Pan Noi 7 Eleven when it opens. The big shop opposite sells some items in bulk and is also likely to be better value than the 7 Eleven. These shops will retain much of the 'Thai' Baht spent in the village. It is the other numerous tourist shops that will be impacted by the new 7 Eleven. It is the 'tourist' Baht that is being gently fought over.

Location

Last Minute Bookings for Christmas and New Year’s Eve 2015

There are those who book their rooms in Thong Nai Pan well in advance, and there are those who for one reason or another wait until November or later to try and get a coveted accommodation in Thong Nai Pan Noi or Yai for the Christmas holidays.

Of the two key days – Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve – the hardest to book is New Year’s Eve. This is no doubt due to the popularity of the New Year’s Eve Party at Haad Rin.

If you are still looking for a room for either of these dates, time is running out. In Thong Nai Pan Noi all the cheaper rooms have gone for New Year’s Eve. Phuwadee and Thong Tapan Resort still have rooms for Christmas. The best you can do for New Year’s Eve in Thong Nai Pan Noi is Buri Rasa. If money is no object (most of us wish) there are still pool villas available at Santhiya and Rasananda.

The situation is a little better on Thong Nai Pan Yai. Both the Four Resort and Starlight Resort have rooms for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Paan Banburi, Nice Resort, Dreamland Resort and Havana Beach Resort have rooms available for Christmas. These will go soon as they are in the mid-range category.

So if you aren’t a millionaire I should book soon to stay in Thong Nai Pan during Christmas and New Year.

For the latest updates on room availability during the Christmas holidays 2015/16 visit Thong Nai Pan Magazine. They have an available rooms update on their front page.

King Rama V in Thong Nai Pan

King Chulalongkorn was the fifth monarch of Siam in the Chakri Dynasty, also known as King Rama V. The present King Bhumibol is of the same dynasty and is called Rama IX.

King Rama V was the monarch that saved the Kingdom from partition under colonial powers. He also attempted to reduce corruption in the administration, abolished slavery and did what he could to modernize the Kingdom while preserving the religious traditions of the country.

He was the first monarch of Thailand to properly tour his Kingdom. He bought a steam ship and spent time visiting the islands in both the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea.

One of the islands that he frequently visited during his reign (1868 – 1910) was Koh Phangan. As several websites about the island mention, King Rama V was particularly smitten with Than Sadet. He went to the waterfall and the beach in this area a number of times. He even carved his initials into a rock by the waterfall. This started a trend: both King Rama VII and the present King Rama IX have also carved their initials into giant rocks by the river bed.

What is less well known is that King Rama V also spent time in the Thong Nai Pan area. He visited Than Prawes waterfall and spent time in the villages of Noi and Yai. As with Than Sadet, he commemorated his fondness for Thong Nai Pan by carving his initials into a large rock in what is now Thong Nai Pan Noi village.

If you are walking from the beach through the village it is on the right. You go past Rasta Baby and over the bridge. The famous rock is next to the building that is at present an ice cream shop. Sadly there is construction work going on at the moment obscuring the rock from the road.

Perhaps if more people expressed an interest in seeing the rock with King Rama V’s initials on the local community would make more of an effort to preserve the area around the rock and make it a tourist attraction.

End of an Era

It was always going to happen. Well ever since Santhiya was finished in 2006. That was the second hotel on Thong Nai Pan Noi. When it was discovered that Santhiya was filling its expensive rooms and pool villas the writing was on the wall for the budget backpacker places in Thong Nai Pan Noi.

It should be considered a good thing that the urge to ‘up-grade’ Tapan Noi bungalows was resisted until 2013. They haven’t been upgraded yet, but they have been shut down; meaning that there aren’t any bungalows for less than 1,000 Thai Baht a night left on the beachfront. That is a bit sad.

Tapan Noi or Baan Tapan Noi attracted lots of people, including many loyal customers who came back year after year. The bungalows on the rocks were simple wooden structures. The ones at the back didn’t have a bathroom. None had air-con. Instead they had a lot of character. The bungalow on the headline point was a gem – with lots of pointed plants outside and access to two beaches. Another bungalow had a bedroom and an entrance area big enough to install a basic kitchen. There were also a couple of bigger bungalows directly on the sand that were highly coveted and usually only let by the month.

The people running Tapan Noi are a friendly bunch. They got to know their long-stay customers and were always ready for a joke and a smile.

The northern end of the beach was ideal – it was free of the nasty early morning drone coming from the Jungle Bar and Hideaway Bar. Instead there was the relaxed I Sea Bar for a drink. Until 2011 there was the excellent Krua Tapan restaurant to enjoy authentic Thai food as well as the Tapan Noi restaurant.

Now that idyllic set up has gone. The Tapan Noi restaurant is still there as is the I Sea Bar but the cheap bungalows – the life blood of that part of the beach – have been taken out of the equation.

At the moment they are just standing there rotting. No doubt in the low season they will be pulled down and will be slowly replaced with air-con bungalows that will make their way onto the Thong Tapan website. It makes business sense I suppose but in terms of culture and pluralism the beach is a poorer place for their closure.

Buri Rasa

Buri Rasa opened for business early 2012 but it was not until late 2012 that they actually finished the resort or put up a website. Cheekily Phangan.info put up a website masquerading as the official website. It is a cheap looking site with minimal content and over-priced booking.

One look at www.burirasa.com is enough to clearly see it is the genuine article. Now that we have the website and a more completed resort we are in a position to offer a review of Buri Rasa in Thong Nai Pan Noi.

For all of those folks who haven’t heard the sad news, Star Huts was torn down in 2011. The owner of Baan Panburi and the Anantara brand bought the land. He moved Baan Panburi over to the southern end of Yai beach and used the space to create ‘Buri Rasa Village’.

From this background it is clear that we have a big player flexing his corporate muscles. He owns Buri Rasa and Baan Panburi and his management group runs Rasananda. How long before he buys Rasananda? His name is William E. Heinecke. He is an American with a Thai passport and one of the richest men in Thailand. 

Although Panviman and Santhiya have branched out, they were conceived as one-off unique resorts. In contrast Buri Rasa from the very outset was designed to belong to a corporate entity and to be heavily branded. There is a Buri Rasa in Koh Samui. It had its ‘soft opening’ in June 2012. It is very similar to the one in Thong Nai Pan Noi. It is beachfront, uses a similar interior design and is aimed at the same 4 star market. The branding is deliberate as the 2 Buri Rasa resorts share the same website!

The Buri Rasa in Thong Nai Pan Noi occupies the corner of the beach between the stream that separates off the Panviman bit of beach up to the public road leading down to the beach. There is a small infinity pool on the beach complete with decking. Next to this is the ‘Beach Club’. This reminds me very much of the Baan Panburi Beach Club but just a bit more up-market. It has the same layout with large open plan restaurant with lots of seating on the beach. The menu is similar too – Thai food and barbeque, only more expensive. They even have a small bar hut to the side, like the old Baan Panburi used to.

As you walk up the road away from the beach you encounter the ‘Village Square’. This is a slightly ambitious or pretentious venture. It depends on your point of view. There is cobbled road, seating under a large tree, cafes, shops and what feels like an English style pub. The architecture is deliberately European rather than Thai. Bright colours, upholstered seating, colonnades and wall murals have transformed this part of the village into a 4 star enclave. If you were kind you would say it is sophisticated; if not you would be inclined to see something that resembles Koh Samui in all its pomp and glory trying to pull in the tourist bucks.

The rooms at Buri Rasa have air-con, en-suite bathrooms and balconies with sea views. It is hotel style accommodation in the sense that it is all in a large multi story building rather than in bungalows or villas stretched out across the beachfront. Building upwards and making the rooms fairly small means that they can offer rooms for as little as $100 a night compared to the minimum of $250 a night it costs for a Rasananda villa.

It is interesting to note that the Buri Rasa is still using computer generated graphics for the rooms. Because of the expansion of Rasananda building of Buri Rasa fell behind schedule. They opened in 2012 with only a few rooms functional and obviously not looking good enough to feature in promotional material.

The original meaning of boutique was a shop that was small and sold unique items. No doubt Buri Rasa will be promoted as boutique. It is not that small and its style is derivative. The rooms offer comfort but not luxury and the restaurant is just a re-make of the previously successful Baan Panburi Beach Club. Buri Rasa is a safe corporate bet to increase revenue from a prime piece of real estate.

Rasananda Live Webcam

This is one page that gives me great solace when I'm away from the beach. I can simply click onto the Rasananda website and then go to the live webcam and spend a good five minutes just watching the red flags of the resort fluttering in the breeze and the bored staff wondering around the empty pool looking like they are busy.

It is addictive viewing. I believe it is the first live webcam from Thong Nai Pan Noi. I'm not sure there sure that there should be more. After all, what happens on the beach should stay on the beach. Perhaps someone will spot Ryan Giggs on the webcam this summer regaling some C list celebrity with tales of his Welsh wizardry on the ball.

If you want to read more about Rasananda Resort click the link.