Thailand Guide
Southern Thailand: the Andaman coast
Ton Sai village
Ton Sai village is a hectic warren of a place, the commercial and nightlife centre of Ko Phi Phi. It's strangely old-fashioned, with its alley traffic of bicycles and push carts and its squalid shanty town and stinky sewers hidden along the edges; but it's also bang up to date, the narrow lanes bursting with state-of-the-art dive shops, raucous bars and trendy boutiques. Most people spend their days on the beach at Ao Loh Dalum, immediately north of the village: at high tide it's an astonishingly pretty curve of powder-white sand beautifully set off by pale blue water; at low-water, however, the tide goes out for miles.
Ton Sai hotels are the least good value on the island and almost none, however expensive, is out of earshot of the thumping all-night beats cranked up by the various bars and clubs; bring some heavy-duty earplugs if you're not planning to party every night. The nightlife is young and drunken, involving endless buckets of Sansom and red bull, dance music played until dawn, and fire-juggling shows on the beach. Most of the bars offer a pretty similar formula, so it's often the one-off events and happy hours that make the difference. Ton Sai is also the best place to eat on Phi Phi, offering everything from bakery cafés to seafood restaurants, as well as cheap Thai curry-and-rice stalls.