Koh Phangan
The Full Moon Party is one beach on one night. The north and east of the island are wooded, quiet, and increasingly where the good kitchens are.
Where
Koh Phangan
Koh Phangan is misread more than any island in Thailand. The Full Moon Party happens at Haad Rin, on a single beach at the southern tip, once a month. The island runs to some hundred and twenty-five square kilometres, much of the interior is national park, and the other twenty-nine nights are nothing like that.
The north coast is the argument. Chaloklum is still a working fishing village with boats and drying racks; Haad Khom and Haad Salad are small coves under jungle; Bottle Beach at the top of the island has no road to it at all and is reached on foot over a headland or by longtail. The east coast is emptier again — Than Sadet, and Thong Nai Pan, a pair of bays that has quietly become the island's most comfortable corner.
In between there is a food scene grown out of the long-stay population that now runs well past the banana-pancake register.
Where the Full Moon Party actually is
Haad Rin sits on the island's southern tip, a small headland with a beach on either side, and the party is on Haad Rin Nok — Sunrise Beach — on the night of the full moon, with warm-up nights around it. It draws thousands. Everything about the island tightens in the two days either side: boats fill, prices move, and the roads out of Haad Rin are best avoided at four in the morning.
The rest of the island, twenty kilometres away over the hills, is unaffected in any way you would notice. So the planning question is simply whether your dates land on it. We check the lunar calendar before anything else, and then either place you well away from Haad Rin, or take you in and bring you out.
Than Sadet, and a king who kept coming back
The Than Sadet stream runs down through forest on the east side of the island to a beach of the same name, over granite worn into basins. Rama V visited fourteen times between 1888 and 1909 and had his royal cipher cut into the boulders; his son and grandson added theirs afterwards. The name means royal stream.
It is national park now, the road in is steep and rough, and the falls are at their best in the months after the rains rather than at the end of the dry season. The point of the walk is the sequence of pools rather than any single fall — you climb from one to the next, and there is usually nobody at the top one.
How long the drive is, and why the coast you pick matters
The island is bigger than it looks and the roads make it bigger still. Thong Sala, where the ferries land, is on the west coast; Thong Nai Pan on the north-east is the better part of an hour away over the ridge, and the last stretch was for years a byword for bad concrete. Bottle Beach has no road at all: you walk forty minutes over a headland from Haad Khom, or take a longtail from Chaloklum.
What this means in practice is that a Koh Phangan stay is a decision about which coast, not a base from which everything is convenient. We would rather put you on the right one for four nights than move you twice.
How We Visit
Our way in
We check the full-moon date before anything else, then choose the coast. Transfers are private — a boat across from Samui or Koh Tao with a driver waiting, rather than the scrum at the pier — and the driver stays with you, because the hills are steep, the evenings are dark and a hired scooter is how most visitors get hurt here. Days tend to be a mix: a morning on the water towards Ang Thong or the sandbar at Koh Ma, an afternoon at Than Sadet, dinner across the island somewhere that would be difficult to find alone.
Questions
What travellers ask
Is Koh Phangan just the Full Moon Party?
No. The Full Moon Party is one beach — Haad Rin, at the southern tip — on one night a month. The rest of the island is largely wooded, much of the interior is national park, and it holds a working fishing village at Chaloklum, coves on the north coast reached on foot, waterfalls at Than Sadet on the east side, and a food scene grown out of its long-stay residents. Most of it is quiet on any night of the year.
When is the Full Moon Party?
On the night of the full moon each month, at Haad Rin Nok on Koh Phangan's southern tip, with smaller nights either side of it. The date moves with the lunar calendar and occasionally shifts for Buddhist holy days or royal occasions. If you want no part of it, the fix is to choose dates away from it, or to stay on the north or east coast, twenty kilometres and an hour of hill road away.
Which is better, Koh Samui or Koh Phangan?
Samui if you want hotels, restaurants and an airport on the island; Koh Phangan if you want quiet and are willing to drive for it. Samui is far more developed and much easier to reach. Phangan's north and east coasts are wooded and largely undeveloped, with a small number of good places to stay and a great deal of nothing in between. Many journeys use both, a boat apart.
Journeys That Include This
Ask about Koh Phangan
It sits inside a journey we already run, and it fits just as easily into one written from scratch around your dates.
Nearby