Crime rate increases on Koh Phangan Island – Burglars & Robbers are watching you!

This bearded – a bit disappointed looking human – on the picture to the left is my good friend Tom from Strinz Trinitatis in Germany. He comes to Koh Phangan every year for a couple of months and usually stays in Darin Bungalow at the west coast and enjoys island life.

But this morning he looks a bit hopeless because he got robbed the second time in the last 2 weeks while sleeping in his bungalow at night with open doors and windows just because it’s far too hot at the moment to keep the doors shut. And as we can see Tom’s pocket is empty now and the lucky thief got a Canon digital camera 3 mega pixels and 2.000 Thai Baht on his first run. Then a couple of nights later he decided that he forgot to take that box of Indonesian Kretek filters and came again at night to close the deal!

All this happened while Tom was sleeping and the rucksack with the digital camera and the trousers with the money were placed just next to the bed. Actually a bit unbelievable that a thief comes into your bungalow and robs you while sleeping but it looks like that there are some cheeky thieves around – so be well prepared 😉

Especially the west coast around the Wok Tum area recently got a bit famous on the island for missing stuff in the bungalow, handbag motorbike thieves and even robbery in the night while driving back home with your motorbike from one of the mountain bars in that area. Sounds a bit hard but that’s what i heard on the streets.

However, over the past few years there has always been stolen stuff from time to time – especially in low season when there are no ATM farangs around. But the last couple of months the situation here seems to get worse. Tourist are being watched while using the ATM in front of the bank and later on somebody grabs your bag with all the money in 🙁 and i heard this happened more than once!

So … prepare yourself! Don’t carry any values around in the basket on your motorbike. Keep the doors and windows shut in the night – you never know who might come and give you a visit while you’re in dream land 😉 all this sounds a bit paranoid but things on Koh Phangan Paradise Island also seem to change … aehm … reliable sources are telling that there was even a gun shooting at the last Full Moon Party on Haadrin beach April 2004. 3 young Thais got killed that night in the gun shooting. If that doesn’t tell us anything, isn’t it?!?!

You’ve been informed!