Backpacker Fiction

The Ultimate Beach Hut

My upcoming trip to Burma includes some R & R time down on the southern islands of Thailand. Despite having been to this area four times already, I find myself always looking forward to returning to Ko Phangan.

I end up staying in the same group of huts every time; a group of shoddy bamboo/palm frames supported by long stilts that anchor them into the rocks below. A rickety wooden walkway snakes over the aqua water between them. They're simple, but picturesque - each with a hammock strung across the veranda.


After three years of travelling around South East Asia, I've been to a good number of backpacker beaches and been in a good number of equally different beach huts. As any beach traveller will know, one doesn't spend much time inside the hut. So if you arrive on Haad Rin the night of the Full Moon party and are shown to the only hut left on the island - a concrete prison-cell with air-conditioning and florettes of orange mushrooms growing next to the toilet - don't worry. Huts with personalities have a habit of growing on you. My favorite hut became blackened every night with hoards of flying ants. Their trail snaked across my wooden walkway and up under the hut's floor beams. "No worry," the owner said. "Happen every night."

The hut serves as a territorial stake for the traveller. It says 'I'm here. I arrived' and most importantly, 'I belong.' It is a place to drop your backpack; it means that your paradise island has accepted you as worthy of inhabiting it, of participating in the utopian reality stretched out across the white sand before you. Backpackers who arrive at just the moment the hut closest to the beach is vacated feel chosen, like the planets have aligned and their presence is not just tolerated, but summoned. Stories of signs that read "Ko Phangan Full," which greeted ferry passengers from Ko Samui before Phangan's development, must have lead to inevitable feelings of personal rejection.


The ultimate beach hut differs depending on what kind of backpacker you are. Ko Phangan's fabled 2$ per night palm huts with sand floors had all been taken by the island's permanent transients - German guys with deep tans, blond dreded hair and tattoos spread across their backs - Brazilian girls with even darker tans, nose rings and yogic posture who came to this island not just to relax, but to live.
My last trip to Phangan in March of 2007, these huts had all been torn down to make way for a luxury resort with a swimming pool as the family-style tourists from Samui grow braver and begin island hopping. The lifers keep moving to progressively quieter beaches where they recolonate again, well aware of the cycle their paradise-hunting perpetuates.

But as my appreciation for sustainable and locally responsible tourism grows, I wonder if the ultimate beach hut could ever turn into the ultimate house, co-op or artists residence.


(above and below - Palmyra House by Studio Mumbai architects)

Mostly open space, construction materials could be kept to a minimum, using locally sourced wood, fabric and labour. Using traditional architecture as inspiration, cooling and insulation costs would be unnecessary due to the hut's design. Collections of these more permanent structures could serve as artist communities or spiritual retreat centers. While southern Thailand is full of places to go for a quick yoga lesson or place to drop your pack before heading to a Moon party, creating a space to actually live and work sustainably in paradise seems to be where my mind is headed these days.

Which brings me back to my original obsession with "the ultimate beach hut." It serves as a blank canvas, homebase, storage locker and constant reminder that you could pick up and leave your hectic, cold, crowded city life for one, not necessarily of luxury, but of stylish simplicity.

Some favorite pictures of beach huts:

Posted by Matthew R. Loney at 6:39 AM

Labels: ko phangan, paradise huts, stylish beach huts, ultimate beach hut