An Expanded Conversation with Khun Manop about Koh Phangan

Khun Manop is original Koh Phangan born and raised with his family here. We talk about his memories of the island before tourism and how people started to visit.

We ask his thoughts on the future on the island, he believes it can be a beautiful thing but does think and hope that the Full Moon Party should return in the future.

Manop believes that it may have been the Chinese people and Malaysian who came here first. He says they have this knowledge as Koh Phangan and Samui are names from the Malay language. It was these people along with people from the mainland, Surat Thani who would have come to Koh Phangan first.

People came to Koh Phangan to start to plant coconut trees and harvest coconuts which we all know about today, this would of been around 2 or 300 years ago and King Rama V first visited Phangan in 1893.

During King Rama V’s reign, Koh Phangan then gained support and a school was opened, before this, there was no school. The island then gained support for its health care and many other things including infrastructure. Manop remembers when he was age 17 and the island was without roads and electricity, this was about 40 years ago.