Thong Nai Pan Trials and Tribulations

Life is a beach when you are living on a beach. However, there is no escaping your own flawed self. I can’t help having my smile dented by small irritations and minor gripes. Staying in Thong Nai Pan has produced 14 little bête noire that I could think name quickly.

1. The ATM machine eating your card. It seems no matter how many times you tell your bank that you are travelling to Thailand they will take your card. You then have to phone the buggers at your own expense and somehow get another card.
2. Having to go on a visa run. It takes you off the beach. It costs money; you have to get up early; and I always get car sick on the winding roads to Burma. Anyway what is the point of going to Burma for 5 minutes to get a visa renewed? A visa run often means the added expense of getting a hotel in Surat Thani.
3. Eating a large piece of chili, and then going through a fiery torture much to the amusement of those you are eating with.
4. Scratching a mosquito bite so much that it starts bleeding and then goes septic meaning a trip to the pharmacy or even the hospital.
5. Having a power cut on a Saturday night when you are watching your team play.
6. Being disappointed when you order Western food.
7. Ordering a burger and not finding brown sauce on one of the tables.
8. Paying more at a bar because there is some tour group going through.
9. Writing a long email and then losing your internet connection before you can send it.
10. Getting drunk and not being able to find your flip flops when you leave a bar.
11. Getting another puncture.
12. Getting a big bug hit your face when riding your bike.
13. Waking up in a sandy bed with scratches on my body and no idea how I got back to my bungalow.
14. Finding a snake in your bungalow.

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.

Kids Club and Indian Buddha House Raksa Website – Gone

Things often disappear without any fanfare in Thong Nai Pan.  The exception perhaps is the finishing party for Baan Pong on Noi beach. This, however, was not much of a swan song, since Better Than Sex was all ready at the time of the party for Pong to move to. This is different to the silent disappearance of Hideaway, Jungle Bar, White Sands, Star Huts, Otto Bungalows, Que Pasa, the original Luna Lounge, The Rock Bar, the Doors Bar and Tipi Cantina. The list could go on to fill this entire post.

The reasons places shut and websites are taken down are numerous. Sometimes it is bad planning, sometimes the competition have too much money and clout, and sometimes what seemed like an easy way to make money turns out to be far too much work  for those concerned.

Kids Club

The Kids Club in Yai might be in the latter category. They set it up and had some initial success in terms of attracting paying customers; providing fun for children (both Thais and foreigners); and getting publicity. They set up a Facebook page and posted pictures and garnered a respectable amount of likes. Yet, the page soon announced that they were looking for a buyer. Sadly, no buyer was forthcoming – after all what is there to buy? Rented accommodation with a handful of toys is not much of an asset. It is the teachers, carers and qualified staff that make a playgroup valuable.

It is a shame because the big hotels in Thong Nai Pan do far too little for children. They are more concerned about ripping families off by charging for a compulsory breakfast for kids who stay with their parents. In the case of Rasananda it is 1,500 Thai Baht. That is outrageous. None of the hotels offer organised events for kids or qualified child minders. They want to think of themselves as ‘5 star’ but can’t be bothered trying to offer child-related services that are normally offered by real 5 star hotels. When a hotel says they have ‘babysitting’ services they mean they have a cleaner or bar tender who will look after your child while you go down the beach for a meal.

Indian House Buddha Raksa

This beach side place on Yai beach hasn’t closed down. They seem to be doing quite well. There was also a wedding in the family recently. So congratulations are in order.

What has changed about Indian House Buddha Raksa is that they have let their website slip. Obviously the foreigner who set it up (and never finished it) gave up in the end and let it slip into oblivion. I suspect that the Thai owners are happy just using Facebook. It is simple and seems to do an adequate job in promoting a business and announcing events, improvements etc. There is very little money in website design anymore thanks to content management systems that make coding skill unnecessary for making a web page. Moreover, Facebook is free whereas renewing an URL costs money.

The only thing I would mention is that Indian House Buddha Raksa used to be simply ‘Indian House’. It is less of a mouthful to say and makes more sense than the present moniker for the business.