Koh Phra Thong: Thailand’s Quietest Great Island 

Koh Phra Thong is one of Thailand’s largest islands, and one of its least known.

Which is really strange, because places like this don’t usually stay secret for long.

I’m not surprised that Koh Bulone or even Koh Libong slip off the radar. But for an island this big, with mile after mile of empty beaches, to go almost completely unnoticed is hard to explain. 

It’s even more odd when you arrive and see how perfect it is.  Long stretches of unspoiled beaches kissed by some of the clearest water in the Andaman Sea.  Sure, accommodation is sparse, but the resorts are excellent quality and remarkably affordable.  So how do you account for that?

The first clue is location.  Koh Phra Thong is, of course, an island.  A 45-minute boat trip from Khura Buri Pier gets you there easily enough, but who ever finds themselves in Khura Buri?

We drove south from Ranong, part of a longer road trip from Bangkok, but I can’t imagine this is the most common approach.  Most visitors will drive north from Phuket and Khao Lak, but this is a long drive. From Phuket Airport to the pier is nearly a three-hour drive.

With so many excellent options en route, most people won’t go any farther, even to somewhere as special as Koh Phra Thong.  I can’t say that I blame them, but I do pity them, because what an escape.  

With no other way for guests to reach them, most hotels will only be to happy to help arrange a boat. We paid THB 1600 to charter a longtail there, and about THB 1000 back, since we split the cost with other guests. Khura Buri itself is a busy fishing port set within a mangrove lined waterway, but the tourist port is charmingly small.

The boat from the mainland stops at a tiny pier nestled in a mangrove-lined inlet.  From there, it’s a 15-minute drive by truck, first on a strip of concrete through grasslands and then five very bumpy minutes through sand.

We stayed at the delightful Moken Eco Village.  Most resorts here seem to have “eco” in the name. I suppose it’s making a virtue of necessity.  Electricity and water are scarce here, so solar power and minimal waste make perfect sense.  

The bungalows would be comfortable anywhere and are a true marvel on an island as remote as this. There are no air conditioners, but the sea breeze was enough even in a sweltering Thai April.  

Moken Eco Village is set among stands of casuarina pines and pandan.  In the boughs, we watched hornbills; on the ground, bright butterfly lizards dart across the hot sand.  

The beach is a perfect curve set between two rocky promontories. From what I’ve seen, the whole western side of Koh Phra Thong is blessed with long, golden sand beaches, but this is surely among the best. 

Across the bay are two small, uninhabited islands. Each has good beaches for landings, so we kayaked across for a visit.  Monkeys live on the islands and are desperate to steal anything they can, our hosts told us, though they stayed hidden during our visit. 

Snorkeling is possible off these beaches, and it’s better than you might expect.  Scattered coral gardens bloom on the windward side of both islands.  We would head to the Surin Islands next and would have been disappointed had the order been reversed. 

There’s not a great deal to *do* on Koh Phra Thong, though most resorts run a popular excursion to see the “savannah,” dry grasslands in the island’s interior that are also one of the last remaining places to see the endangered Lesser Adjutant Storks in the wild.  With only two nights and an early departure, we didn’t have time, but would have gone if we’d had one more free morning. 

In our kilometer-long arc of sand, I don’t think we ever saw more than three people.  This was the quiet season before most hotels close for the off-season, but there were enough of us to keep one great beach bar in business.  

The Bar (that’s its name), is run by Santi, who makes the cocktails and manages the playlist. He flies a Grateful Dead flag on the sand in front of the bar, but it’s the only thing we never heard him play.  

The bar is the best way to source fresh seafood too.  Add Santi on WhatsApp and he’ll message you with the day’s catch. Red snapper when we went, prepared whole with garlic and pepper.  With some prawns and morning glory, it was the break from the (very good) Moken Eco Village restaurant we never knew we needed. 

The beach is quite steep for the first 10 meters, but then flattens out so that at low tide, the shallows stretch for a hundred meters or more. 

Walking back late one evening on the sand beside these flats, Isobel stepped on a sea snake, coiled in the sand.  About the only way you’d get one of these incredibly venomous but shy snakes to bite would be to step on one, but this one was (fortunately) long dead.  A new family legend, however, was born. 

The next morning, we had to return to Khura Buri Pier to catch a transfer to the Surin Islands.  

As I usually do when I have an early alarm, I woke up an hour before it went off.  Not wanting to force anyone else to wake so early, I walked down to the beach.  

The sky was just turning pink, perfectly mirrored in the flat water of the still bay.  As I walked along the beach, hornbills, half a dozen of them, noted my arrival with a chorus of screeches.  As soon as I was far enough away for their comfort, everything returned to quiet. 

Once the rest of the family woke up, we carried our bags to the truck and climbed in the back.  It was too early for breakfast, so Moken had kindly prepared packed breakfasts for us. 

The tide was out, so instead of the wild, bumpy ride through a sandy track, we sped along the pavement-smooth beach flats.  A longtail sat waiting for us, backed onto an empty beach at the far northern tip of the island.  

The calm sea was silver in the early morning light as we motored back to the mainland.  As we drew nearer Khura Buri Pier, we joined dozens of trawlers returning from a night of fishing across the northern Andaman.  They would unload their catch and then sleep until they set out again that evening.  We had a shorter and easier turnaround: we would immediately depart from the same pier for the Surin Islands.