Old school Thailand beach huts

May 20, 2018 8:51 AM

In the early 2000's I spent a lot of time in Thailand on relatively undeveloped beaches staying in huts like this. A string of beach huts on a beach, no town or village to speak of and a restaurant or two along the beach. I haven't been to Asia for 10 years or so and I know that Thailand has undergone a huge amount of development in that time. My question is, do those type of places still exist, and can you direct me to them? Thailand preferably, but open to other suggestions also.
posted by conifer to Travel & Transportation (5 answers total)

These bungalows are very easy to find in beachy tourist parts of Indonesia, and I stayed in a lovely one on the island of Lombok. The place I stayed had some dogs who slept under the bungalows at night, and whenever my stomach growled, the dogs would growl back.
posted by ChuraChura at 10:00 AM on May 20, 2018 [8 favorites]

I've seen plenty of these along the coast of Southern Vietnam. Take a look at the excellent website Vietnam Coracle, which I used to plan a 500mi bicycle trip a couple months back, for lots and lots of detail.
posted by tapir-whorf at 1:39 PM on May 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

ChuraChura's Indonesia suggestion is a good one - Bali and Java are too developed for this but Lombok offers this for sure; Pulau Weh, a bit north of Banda Aceh on Sumatra, might as well. Anywhere further east will also - to the extent there is a tourism infrastructure in place - probably offer something similar, but you'd need to work rather hard to get there and that's going to mean a wealthier class of tourist is making the journey - see this review of Raja Empat, which seems to have the hut-style you want, but also costs upwards of $200.

Also see the interesting and exhaustive resource TravelFish and their extensive listing of islands.
posted by mdonley at 9:28 PM on May 20, 2018

(In Thailand, check out Ko Bulon Lae. Shhhh.)
posted by mdonley at 9:33 PM on May 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

I saw these on Ko Lanta in Thailand. My impression is they are still common outside of the trendiest islands.
posted by rednikki at 11:14 AM on May 21, 2018