Back in December 2024 we were already in Ko Phayam for ten days. We liked it so much that we decided to stay here for the second half of February, before moving for one month on the eastern part of Thailand, in Ko Phanghan. We luckily found an accomodation on the beach, in a very nice resort. We were literally one minute walking distance from a beautiful beach on Buffalo Bay, in a pretty modern bungalow located in a nice garden, full of nature. There were also two dog puppies always coming to play, we saw monkeys on the trees, and squirrels and hornbills were fed by the staff every morning during breakfast with leftover food (by the way, they should not do it, as the animals lose their instincts when they are fed by humans). The people working there was also very friendly and helpful.

In general the island was very packed at this time, we were hearing people everyday asking around for available accomodations. So we booked ours a couple of weeks in advance, and it was a very good decision. We also met a lot of people in Thailand that is still travelling spontaneously, without pre-booking, but just deciding day by day where to sleep. We didn't want to spend a lot of time looking for places to sleep, so we always booked before.

This time that we visited Ko Phayam, the weather was much sunnier than in December. Moreover, a new small gym has opened in January this year. So our typical day for these two weeks was having breakfast at the resort, going to the gym, and chilling on the beach, or playing backgammon. We also visited many nice bars for the sunset, like the famous Hippy bar, with a large wooden structure built on the beach, looking like a boat.

Another crazy bar, a huge structure entirely built with wood, ending directly on the sea, was the Rock bar. The access from the beach is much easier than the one from the street, where we had to drive on a part of dirt road. We went there a couple of times to chill and have an amazing view of the sunset. It is really unbeliavable how they could build such huge wooden structure, with the limited resources that they have on this small island.

On the day of my birthday, the weather was pretty cloudy and we decided to try to kayak between the mangroves. To reach the kayak rental was already a little adventure, as we had to drive on the sand for a while. The rental is a bar located at the end of a very narrow bridge. From there, we kayaked forth and back on the same route, for approximately 2 hours in total. The mangroves offer a pretty and green view, but nothing so special... It was nice that we were alone almost the whole time, it's not the most popular activity in Ko Phayam 😊.

One day we walked to another small island, called Reggae Island, that is reachable by just walking when the tide is low from a remote beach. The way is "spiky", full of small stones and shells, so without flip flops it is not the easiest walk. As soon as we arrived, we saw some people at a small bar, and we walked a bit around the island. There was an abandoned resort in bad conditions, with newly built bungalows on the beach half destroyed. We read on the internet that this resort sadly didn’t survive the Covid crisis. Overall Reggae island was not so spectacular, and probably had better days in the past, but it was cool to walk to a different island.

This time on Ko Phayam there was a party/event almost every evening. This place used to be very sleepy and chill, so sometimes we could hear around some people complaining about the noise till late, etc... But we went to a couple of parties, one of them was at a new open air club in the jungle, called Mabarla. The location is very special and we liked it. One evening we went to the event organized by the school of Ko Phayam, to raise money to build infrastructures for the kids, and we had dinner there from the street food stalls. On our last evening on the island, we went to the Cashew Nut Festival, that is hold at this time of the year, when it is the time to harvest the fruits from the trees. Ko Phayam is famous for its cashew nut trees, they are everywhere, and you can buy nuts at every corner. They are very good and absolutely cheap.