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

The Great Escape Chalets

The Great Escape Chalets are the latest arrival to the Thong Nai Pan Yai accommodation scene. It is a group of larger bungalows or ‘chalets’ located back from the beach. It opened in late 2014 and offers good mid-range bungalows. It is not so much a resort as a small collection of bungalows.

The Great Escape Chalets are located 25 meters from Thong Nai Pan Yai beach between The Four Resort (formerly known as Central Cottage) and Pen’s Bungalows. It is a row of 10 large concrete bungalows that offer, as the official prose claims, ‘garden and mountain’ views. Naturally, previous occupants have already commented on the bad location. This seems unfair – the bungalows are close to the beach; they just lack sea views. This obsession with being beachfront never ceases to puzzle me. Is the extra cost really worth it? Most resorts tend to take up most of their beach frontage with a restaurant, as that can generate more revenue per square meter of sand than through accommodation.

There isn’t a restaurant or any other extra facilities at The Great Escape Chalets. No gym or swimming pool or spa. It is an accommodation option that has been created by separately branding a line bungalows that belongs to Pen’s.

The bungalows are concrete. Guests enter via glass folding doors. The rooms have tiled floors and windows. They are spacious. They have attached bathrooms with actual baths as well as hot water. The rooms also have small fridges, TVs and free wifi. There is a choice between a room with 2 single beds and a room with a double bed.

While prospective guests might get excited about the thought of an actual ‘bath’ in the bathroom, it should be remembered that the water that comes out of the taps is from the nearby waterfall. It is brown water. The colour is not noticeable when having a shower, but will no doubt be spotted in a white bath. Moreover, every summer sees water shortages in Thong Nai Pan. The use of baths hardly helps the effort to manage limited water supplies.

The ‘Superior Chalets’ cost about 1,500 Thai Baht a night. While they are more spacious than most of the bungalows in Yai they aren’t beach front and are more than twice the price to bungalows at The Four Resort, Dolphin Bungalows, Nice Beach Resort and Longtail Beach Resort.

Those brave enough in this age of internet booking to just turn up might well be able to get a discount as ‘walk in’ trade. In which case head for Flip Flop Bar on the beach and enquire in there.

The End Bar and Restaurant

The End is a stylish looking bar and restaurant on Thong Nai Pan Yai beach in front of Candlehut Resort. The publicity photos showing this long ellipsis of wooden decking on the beach with orange bean bags make the bar / restaurant look impressive. Sadly, looks can be deceptive. Early reports suggest both the food and the service are lousy.

Candlehut Resort in Yai has some better quality bungalows on the beach. They have moved away from the original backpacker style of Koh Phangan and offer a more boutique experience. However, over the years the accommodation has started to look somewhat shabby. The difference between the stunning publicity photos of the bungalows and the reality is marked.

The same point could be made of The End Beach Bar and Restaurant: the sales photos of the place make it look better than it really is. The main complaints about The End concern the staff that are inattentive and unfriendly, and the food which is not very good for the money.

The food takes a long time to come out and when it does it is disappointing. The calamari is too rubbery; the Caesar salad has far too much cream and not enough chicken or lettuce; and the Thai chicken with cashew nuts has no real Thai spicy taste to it.

All this is a shame because The End has a great location with the sea in front and the mountains behind. The bean bag seating is cool and there is a water feature with blue lighting that has a funky effect at night.

The End Beach Bar and Restaurant could be so much better than it actually is. No doubt its cool appearance and prime location will pull in plenty of first time punters. It is also not to be doubted that few will return.

I suspect that when TA (that over-rated corporate site) eventually pulls in reviews about The End the management might start to care a bit more about the service and food at the new Candlehut bar. Until then stay away.

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.

Su's Cafe and Bakery

One of the most noticeable characteristics about most of the small businesses on both Thong Nai Pan Noi and Yai is that they make no effort on promotions. The big hotels have websites and are on most of the major booking engines. They run promotions and they publish press releases. In contrast the little bungalow operations, the small restaurants and bars and the other service providers are virtually invisible to all but passing trade.

One example of this is Su's Cafe. I have passed the sign for the place countless times as I ride my bike into Yai. It’s on the left, on the main road. I always imagined it was some old lady with an oven knocking out a few loaves of bread and a few cakes for the tourists.

It turns out I was wrong. Su is the Thai half of a fully fledged restaurant and bungalow business. The other half is Eric. They are an older couple who seemed to have carved out a nice little niche for themselves on Thong Nai Pan Yai without most people noticing.

Su's Café and Bakery is comprised of a small restaurant, 3 ‘houses’ for rent and 1 bungalow to rent. It is an accommodation option that isn’t on Agoda etc. You can go to their website directly (http://su-cafe-andhouseforrent.com/) or drop in if you want to rent a house. After several years of being open for business Su Café and Bakery has only 1 Trip Advisor review. That kind of warms my heart. I’m sure they provide good service and warm hospitality. It is that they aren’t interested in helping corporate entities like T.A.

The restaurant has German bread, schnitzels, pizza, pasta, salads, steaks and burgers. It is one of only 2 places in Thong Nai Pan to put their menu and prices online. This I like. Whenever I eat in Thong Nai Pan I always feel they are too keen to get the menu away from me, like it contains secret information. Pricing is far from transparent in Thong Nai Pan. Thank goodness Thai Break has stopped as that event drove prices up by 20% for 10 days.

House 1 is 1 bed with air-con, kitchen, fridge, washing machine and UBC TV. House 2 has 2 bedrooms (fan), kitchen, fridge, TV and washing machine. House 3 is for rent or sale. It has 2 air-con bedrooms, a bathtub, kitchen, fridge and TV. The bungalow is a basic fan affair.

The accommodation is set in a tropical garden. It doesn’t enjoy sea views but is peaceful and a good spot to avoid the crowds.

I have never stayed at Su's Café and Bakery. Trip Advisor won’t help you. Why not go and see for yourself?

New Koh Phangan Review Site

I've just come across a blog started up which is devoted to reviews of Koh Phangan. It only has a few postings so far but looks to be a mine of useful information about Koh Phangan, that little spot of paradise rising out of the Gulf of Thailand.

The site has stuff about where to eat, reviews by people who've stayed in various resorts, hotels and bungalow outfits around the island, and other interesting comments. The good and the bad. It's all represented, or I hope it will be, on Koh Phangan Review.