Bangbao, Koh Chang: 2011-12 Update

A visit to Bang Bao village is on the itinerary of almost every visitor to Koh Chang. It is, or rather was, an ‘Olde Fashioned’ traditional Thai fishing village. However, dive schools, tacky souvenir shops, seafood restaurants and a 7-eleven minimart, and a couple of rows of ugly shophouses have pretty much destroyed what charm the village once had.

Tourism has long since replaced fishing as the main source of employment and income for the locals who haven’t yet sold up and moved on. And with expats willing to pay several million baht for a rickety house here the temptation for locals to sell and therefore turn Bangbao into a tourist ghetto is pretty high.

Several dive schools have their main offices on the pier, so if you are interested in diving and want to talk to a few schools before making a choice then head to Bangbao pop into The Dive Adventure, BB Divers, Ploy Scuba or Scubadive Thailand and you’re sure to find one of them who can accommodate you on a course at a price you like. You’ll find published prices are virtually the same as dive companies run a little cartel to ensure this. However, there is a lot of competition, so haggle and you will get discounts at all but the busiest times of year. Many dive operators also throw in free accommodation for anyone taking a PADI Open Water course or similar.

There are still a few fishing boats that are actually used for fishing and not for taking visitors on snorkelling trips. You’ll see catches of prawns & squid being sorted at a couple of small seafood wholesalers near the end of the pier. However, as the quality of their catch is pretty high, virtually all the seafood caught off Koh Chang goes for export. Very little is sold in Bangbao, most restaurants here will buy food from wholesalers elsewhere on the island or even order from the mainland where prices are cheaper.

You can catch fish yourself, off the end of the pier.  There are usually a couple of fishing boats moored in the area and when they are cleaning their decks this attracts a lot of larger fish.  You’ll often see some of locals casting their rods down by the lighthouse.

What you will find is that most people don’t stay very long in Bangbao and these that do just wander up and down the pier. Worth bearing in mind if you’re opening a business there that relies on passing trade. The simple reason is that once you have walked along the 300 metre long, metre and a half wide walkway that connects the houses built over the sea there’s not a great deal to do other than continue walking another 350 metres to the end of the extension to the pier, which was completed in early 2007.

The views from the lighthouse at the end of the pier are pretty impressive, with a 360 degree panoramic view of the village, mountains, bay and outlying islands. So it’s worth the hot walk for the photo opportunity.

Having done that, it’s time to browse the shelves of ‘Made in China’ seashell souvenirs, wooden trinkets and t-shirts tat are for sale. ( My favourite t-shirt has the words ‘Koh Chang, Thailand’ beneath the picture of a panda. There probably are still some mammals hiding undiscovered in the jungle . . . but pandas are pushing it a bit.) The best of the souvenir shops is Bangbao Shop, located on the right about 10 metres from the start of the pier, they have some unique Koh Chang t-shirts, unlike other vendors that sell the same stuff as each other.

If you’re on a budget grab a fruit shake or snack at one of the rather nice cafes that are beginning to sprout up along the pier. but if you’re travelling as part of an organised tour, who’s sole purpose for visiting the island is to spend as much as possible in the guide’s choice of seafood restaurant, you’ll be tucking into a seafood buffet.

Avoid Bangbao at 9am and 5pm when all the dive and snorkelling tour boats are leaving and arriving and also lunchtime at weekends when minivans of weekending Thai visitors arrive for lunch. Outside those times it can be deathly quiet.

‘Ruen Thai Seafood’ is rated by many who know their fresh sea crab, prawns and fish as the best place to eat in Bangbao.  It is the first restaurant on the right hand side as you walk down the pier – look for the staff all watching TV and you’ll know you have the right place. It isn’t the fanciest, doesn’t have great service and isn’t a well advertised restaurant.  But you can’t go wrong if you just want good food at a good price. At the other end of the spectrum are the western run places that attract almost exclusively foreign visitors for fruit shakes, nice decor and snacks you recognise from home. ‘Buddha View’ falls into this obviously touristy category but has a nice ambiance and is good for a sunset cocktail. Seabird, Nok Noi and Chowlay are also good seafood eateries – the latter being very popular with Thai tour groups.

Koh Chang Sea Hut, at the end of the pier is the other good accommodation option. There used to be quite a few bungalows but most were removed as they were illegally built.  Several are still there though and these octagonal wooden AC huts are built on poles above the sea look similar to the type of accommodation found in the Maldives. The difference being no-one sane would venture into the water around Bangbao village due to the high level of pollution. ( The water quality here was reported as being the worst on the island, with White Sand Beach being a close second. In mid 2009 a campaign to clean up Bangbao was launched, this amounted to plastering the place with ‘Clean and Green’ stickers and adding a handful of garbage bins at various places on the pier. )

Although most people just make it to the pier, there is more to the Bangbao area than this.

Before you reach the turning for Bangbao, you can explore a little by taking the dirt track that is signposted towards ‘Nirvana’ (the luxury resort whose tiled roof bungalows can be seen from Bangbao pier) and ‘Cliff Cottages’ (the huts hugging the hillside). Head along here and you’ll first come to ‘Remark Puzi Bungalows’ – these aren’t much more than usual wooden backpacker huts, the difference being the owners have made an effort to landscape the gardens and present them in a very nice manner.

A few hundred metres further, a new, eco-friendly, German designed luxury, 15 villa, housing development – The Edge Village – located less than 10 minutes walk from the village on a tranquil clifftop. Nice spot but as nowadays no-one is looking for a million Euro home in Thailand, the entire project is for sale – if you are interested.

Cliff Cottages have their restaurant hidden away on the western side of the peninsula overlooking a cove that’s one of the best places for fishing and snorkelling on the island. The basic bungalows look out over the sea from the clifftop and come with cracking sunset views.  They  and attract guests looking for an ‘old skool’ backpacker experience – no fireshows, guest DJ’s or vodka/redbull buckets here – just peace and quiet. New ensuite fan huts have also recently been built for anyone needing a tad more comfort.

The track appears to end next door at ‘Nirvana’, a luxury boutique resort with walkways through the jungle a small beach, pool and beautiful wooden restaurant overlooking the bay. However, it doesn’t, just keep walking/riding/driving and follow it to the end – past a small hut resort called ‘Homestay Beach’ – and onwards until you reach the end of the peninsula. At the end you will find Resolution Resort, another of those places that don’t bother with signage and most people on the island have never heard of it.  It is a bit out of the way.  But is brand new, completed mid 2011, and has a pool and lovely views across the bay.  Only for the adventurous though as access isn’t straightforward

Renting a motorbike is a necessity if you plan on staying in Bangbao or exploring the area nearby. Once you’ve done Bangbao village, you can head a kilometre further along the south coast to Klong Kloi Beach. Until 3 years ago there wasn’t any accommodation on this scenic south facing beach. However, in the past couple of years the budget KK Huts, luxury Chivapura Resort and good value Tropical beach Resort have all opened.  However, there’s still no public transport to this beach, so you’ll have to walk from Bangbao if you don’t have a scooter, or pay over the odds for the driver to take you down to Klong Kloi. On the beach you’ll find a couple of restaurants, beach bars, a few deckchairs and some massage women who’ll probably be sleeping.  This beach is becoming increasingly popular with Eastern Europeans who head here in droves during High Season.  However, it’s easy to walk along the beach a little ways to escape the topless Russian girls – if you really wanted to.  400 metres from the start of the beach, between KK Huts and Chivapura Resort is ‘Ernie Barnes’ beach bar – a very nice spot to hang out for the day.

This area was also home to the most beautiful lagoon on the island, which was destroyed in order to build  Koh Chang Grand Lagoona Resort. ( See the bottom middle photo on this page, taken during construction of the resort & showing the coral reef that was just off the beach being dug up. )  If you keep following the road past Klong Kloi Beach and you’ll find that it terminates at this resort where the security guard will politely ‘shoo’ you off the land unless you look like you have a reservation or want to pay 150 baht to come in and have a look around.

This wannabe 5* resort featured prominently in the Thai newspapers in November 2003. It’s a long story but basically the resort is owned by a Thai billionaire who ignored every single planning & building rule ever laid down on paper in his effort to build his dream resort. Locals were paid small fortunes to keep planning officials away and things reached a head when high ranking National Park officials landed in the resort by helicopter in order to see just what was going on there. The moored boat/hotel in their advertising brochures was actually classified by local planning authorities as a building . . . obvious really as it couldn’t be classed as a boat as it doesn’t have a seaworthiness certificate.

In the end the title deeds were all found to be in order, apparently they were issued a day before the resort opened – after the owner initially couldn’t find them when asked to produce them for the powers that be. (Probably lost them behind the sofa.)

Still, it is a bizarre resort, and interesting to look around – the 150 baht entrance fee gets you a bicycle and a free snack and soft drink or beer in the beach restaurant. You can see the floating swimming pool and explore the ship that has been turned into a floating hotel but it’s dark, musty, eerily quiet, plush carpeted corridors will remind you of the set from an early 1980s horror movie.  Great views from the roof though. There is also a nice little waterfall. Other highlights you can see there include a lifeboat off a tanker that sank of the US coast in the 80s and rusting, abandoned plant machinery.

Between Bangbao and Klong Kloi Beach you’ll pass Tranquility Bay Residence, with fully furnished condominiums and beachfront villas from around 7 million baht upwards in an ideal location for anyone who enjoys excellent views and is looking for an alternative to the hustle and bustle of Samui or Phuket. The partners behind this development are at least doing their best to make it as environmentally friendly as possible and whilst prices are fairly high, it is the best of the developments on Koh Chang at present.

Some maps show a road around the island, leading from Bangbao to Salakphet in the southeast of the island. This exists only in the imagination of the cartographer. A few years ago work began on the 10.157km (according to signs) single lane road which is officially only for motorbikes and bicycles. The money ran out though well before the project could even be half completed. You’ll see the start of the road around a kilometre before you reach Grand Lagoona, the paved road heads off to the left. You can drive along it for just over a kilometre, until you reach a section that was washed out by rains in August 2005. A makeshift wooden bridge takes you over to the other side providing you are on foot or on a motorbike. Cross over, head up the incline for 500 metres and the road turns into a dead end. It literally just stops and you’ve got a rubber plantation in front of you.

However, in 2010 the go ahead was given for a new budget and construction of the road is expected to begin again any time now . .. i.e. a few years.  A new route has been mapped out too and the route markers – white plastic bags tied to trees -  for this are visible.  So technically, you could possibly walk the route right now to get to Wai Chek beach and Salakphet – but it will involve hiking through jungle for a few kilometres.

Getting to Bang Bao can be a hassle at times unless you have your own transport. The alternatives are to catch one of the irregular pick-up taxis that sometimes travel as far as Bang Bao or hoof it from Lonely Beach – a 4km walk. 4km isn’t too far but throw in a few steep climbs and the Thai sun and 4km quickly feels like 40km.

In fact, it’s only the prospect of having to get sweat stains out of my car’s upholstery that has so far prevented me from offering a lift to any of the puffy red-faced, young travellers I’ve seen plodding along the road. (I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking this, so a tip for anyone attempting the walk – try not to perspire too much and you may get a lift.)

So, you may find that, outside high season, you have to negotiate a fare to & from Bangbao. It usually takes at least an offer of 300 baht to persuade the driver to take a couple of people back to Kai Bae or Klong Prao. But in the high season you’ll be able to get there and back without too much difficulty.

Google Map of the Bangbao area

Details and Reviews of hotels and resorts in the Bangbao area

Next: Over to the East Coast of Koh Chang