Island Wrap #86: Latest earthquake news, the Full Moon Party endures, another Ko Chang bridge update, and more

A free monthly spin around the most intriguing and consequential news and other media from Thailand's islands and coastal areas.

Apr 03, 2025

Greetings island lovers and welcome to your free monthly news review from Thailand’s islands and coastal areas — and sometimes beyond.

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Catch of the month

Recently from Thai Island Quest…

T.I.C.D.: Phang Nga coast & offshore islands (Part II: Khao Lak, Thai Mueang & Khok Kloi)

T.I.C.D.: Phang Nga coast & offshore islands (Part I: Khuraburi & Takua Pa + Khao Sok)

With these two final sections we reached the end of the Thai Island & Coastal Directory with its grand totals of 1,216 islands and 350 notable coastal areas covered throughout all 24 of Thailand’s coastal provinces. Now I’m circling back to the introductory chapter, where I expect to add one last piece about charting the country’s mainland coasts a little later this month.

From there I’ll assess everything that still needs to be done to turn the T.I.C.D. into an actual book, as opposed to the online guide that already exists at the Thai Island Quest website. I’ll do my best to keep subscribers in the loop as this final part of the process unfolds, starting with an update coming soon under the title, “The Thai Island & Coastal Directory is fully written. Now what?”

Otherwise, I’m back in the US for a few months doing some driving work so that I can get back to making Thai Island Quest the web’s most comprehensive resource on Thailand’s islands and coastal areas soon. I will publish some new content while I’m here, but the pace of that and refining the T.I.C.D. will be gradual until I return to Thailand in a few months. Thanks for your patience and support!

Earthquake update

By now I’m sure you’ve heard about the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck central Myanmar’s Sagaing region and violently shook Bangkok along with most of Northern Thailand on March 28th. My wife Chin, who was leading a food tour in Bangkok when the roughly five minutes of shaking began, described it as “very scary and chaotic.” Skyscrapers swayed and trains rocked as frightened workers and residents flooded from buildings on to gridlocked streets. (The most revealing photo documentation of the quake I’ve seen so far comes from The New York Times.)

It “was the strongest tremor felt in Thailand since 1930 when about 500 people were killed,” according to the director-general of the Mineral Resources Dept. Bangkok was declared a disaster area as the metro system closed and many residents sought alternative lodgings due to safety concerns about their buildings. By Wednesday, 34 buildings had been deemed “badly damaged” following inspections, though Bangkok’s historical landmarks appeared largely unscathed.

Harrowing scenes are still unfolding at the northern Bangkok construction site where the 30-story State Audit Office building collapsed with dozens of workers inside. The death toll stood at 29 with 59 still missing as of yesterday, but some hope remains as rescue teams work around the clock and families of the missing wait for news in heartbreaking vigils nearby. As stated by Bangkok’s mayor and reported by Bangkok Post: “At about 10pm, rescuers reached a hole and shouted out for survivors. They heard soft responses calling for help. The voice seemed to be a woman’s. To make sure it was a survivor, rescuers asked for three knocks and there were three knocks in response. There is hope there are survivors at fire exits.”

Some are calling it a miracle that more of Bangkok’s buildings didn’t topple, but experts say a 7.7 magnitude quake centered 1,200 km away should not have brought the State Audit Office building down regardless of its unfinished state. “Substandard steel” reportedly “made by a company whose factory had been shut for other violations” has been pulled from the site, and multiple probes into the two companies overseeing the construction are underway. In fact, a corruption watchdog had raised concerns about the project long before the quake.

The mood in Bangkok remains jittery. On April 1st, rumors of a “building shake” that prompted workers to evacuate Building A of Government Complex were later dismissed as “mass hysteria.” The MRT “denied social media speculation that a section of the Purple Line’s elevated railway had been damaged.” And despite assurances that condos built since 2007 “are earthquake safe,” Bangkok’s already oversupplied condo market is expected to take a major hit this year as residents “look at high-rises with a new sense of dread.” I reckon this a sentiment shared by the Korean man who was on a skybridge linking two skyscrapers in the moment when it cracked apart, prompting him to leap across the divide.

Traveling to Bangkok and the rest of Thailand is still considered safe, with quake-related emergency declarations already lifted and all of Bangkok’s metro lines and other transport services now operating normally. The situation in Mandalay and other parts of central Myanmar remains dire, however, as the death toll there surpasses 3,000. For news from that country which seemingly cannot catch a break, I suggest domestic outlets like Myanmar Now and The Irrawaddy.

Weather and shipwrecks

Now fully within the depths of hot season, Thailand stayed relatively dry last month even if one exception came from Cha-am in Phetchaburi province, where a “massive waterspout” ripped tiles off the roofs of several homes. The Meteorological Dept. is warning of heavy rainstorms today in 16 provinces on both coasts of Southern Thailand, with notably rough seas expected in the Gulf.

Four boating accidents were reported last month. A British woman tragically died when a fire erupted on the small dive boat she was riding in off Ko Tao. Another fire engulfed a speedboat off Ko Maithon in Phuket province; all 33 onboard were rescued but some had minor injuries. Royal Thai Navy personnel rescued all nine crew members of a sinking fishing boat after it collided with an ocean liner “some 70-80 miles off the Songkhla-Nakhon Si Thammarat coastline.” And a tanker carrying liquified petroleum gas ran aground on Ko Larn near Pattaya, with its captain claiming he took that ill-fated course to avoid hitting another vessel.

Travel and food

The truth behind Thailand’s Full Moon Party in The White Lotus (TIME explains: “How the Full Moon Party came about is a matter of some debate. Joe Cummings, author of the original Lonely Planet Thailand, believes it was started by Haad Rin’s Tommy Resort in 1987. He first attended two years later and found 12,000 people partying in transcendental harmony. Instead of alcohol, ‘ganja and magic mushrooms were being sold openly,’ Cummings tells TIME.”

I lived on Thailand’s ‘White Lotus’ island — here’s what the show gets right (and wrong) (Time Out)

Sri Racha trip report (Future Southeast Asia catches up with a bustling and diverse city on the Chonburi coast near Bangkok.)

The Thai island with a food scene that rivals the beach (The New York Times points out a few favorite dining spots in Phuket.)

The politics of Lanna identity and the restoration of ethnic Thai dishes (Fulcrum with a rather enlightening piece explaining the crossroads of regional and ethnic identities, government centralization and nationalism, and foods of Northern Thailand that don’t need a tourism board to make them fabulous.)

In Pictures: Will Bangkok’s move to Singapore-style hawker centres kill the city’s street food scene? (CNA)

Tourism

Thailand’s digital arrival card to be mandatory for foreign tourists from May 1 (Skift on the TDAC, which replaces the old TM.6 arrival card and will require travelers “to pre-register online up to three days before arrival, providing personal and travel details such as passport information and accommodation addresses.” The new system is also well explained in this post by Richard Barrow.)

‘No decision yet’ on cutting visa-free period (Bangkok Post bucks the common tendency of news outlets to equate Thai government officials discussing a potential change to the change already being a foregone conclusion.)

National parks to consider private management of some services (Thai PBS on a potential move to shift accommodation and food services within national parks from the DNP itself to private companies.)

Transport

The Koh Chang Bridge (I Am Koh Chang with a fresh update — scroll to the bottom of the page to find it — on how authorities have selected a 5.6 km route that roughly follows the routes used by current ferry companies. Keep in mind however that this project has not yet been approved, with several studies incomplete, and the opening of any potential bridge remains several years away. As for now, a “main point of contention seems to be the fact that as the bridge is being classed as an expressway, it can only be used for four wheel vehicles and above.”

Phuket’s Sarasin Bridge is a silent witness to a tragic love story (The Nation on an a 1980s love story which mirrors that of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’)

Songkhla vies for big spenders with cruise plan (Bangkok Post on a plan to add this scenic and historical city to the Gulf of Thailand cruise routes that currently include Ko Samui along with Laem Chabang up in Chonburi.)

New Phuket, Samui tollways hope to end traffic horrors (Bangkok Post on some yet-to-be-approved plans to outfit Thailand’s two largest islands with elevated motorways. In related news, an additional proposal to build over 900 km of new roads spanning six Andaman coastal provinces, dubbed the “Andaman Riviera,” will reportedly be ready for government review by this June.)

Environment

As Thailand chokes on smog, these citizens wrote the law to fix it (Hard Stories on how, thanks to the work of Thai citizen groups, “the war for clean air … is closer than ever to a breakthrough.” With pollution now affecting parts of Southern Thailand and having gotten so bad up North that three districts imposed a lockdown and curfew, positive changes couldn’t come soon enough.)

Breaking cycle of forest land grabs (Bangkok Post cites a forest in Chanthaburi that was illegally turned into a durian farm as part of a worrying trend in which land that had been allocated to low-income farmers is being sold off to developers for larger-scale agricultural and commercial use.)

Wildlife

Another survey off the Andaman coast revealed a dire need to re-establish seagrass beds — or say goodbye to Thailand’s dugongs forever.
The carcass of an adult Bryde’s whale whose “body and head had cut wounds … assumed to be the impact of being struck by a ship during feeding time” sadly washed up along the Bang Pu coast southeast of Bangkok.
A “grandpa” green sea turtle swam home from Phuket to the protected waters of Mu Ko Similan after eight years of treatment and rehabilitation that followed a serious injury from being struck by a boat propeller. Before its five-day journey, the turtle’s festive release was captured on video.

Society

Thailand’s happiness: A delicate balance between finances and well-being (Ipsos shares results from its annual global happiness survey placing Thailand as the as the 49th happiest out of 147 countries worldwide.)

Thailand downgraded to ‘not free’ in new Freedom House report (Prachatai spotlights some of the factors holding Thailand back.)

Tariffs rip through Southeast Asia stocks, sink baht (Bloomberg via Bangkok Post on how export-driven economies like Thailand and Vietnam are expected to be among the hardest hit by the US-instigated trade war. These two countries face sky-high tariffs of 36% and 46%, respectively, despite their actual tariff rates on US imports being set at only around 9% on average.)

Thailand picks 4 provinces popular with tourists to host casino-entertainment complexes (CNA on how, if the proposal gets enough votes from the government despite significant resistance, the complexes are likely to eventually be built in Bangkok, Chonburi, Chiang Mai and Phuket.)

Bhikkhuni’s silent revolution (Bangkok Post with an op-ed on how Thailand’s female Buddhist monastic, or bhikkhuni, movement is growing despite being officially against the rules of the country’s patriarchal Buddhist establishment.)

In other news

Similan national park chief investigated for alleged corruption (Thai PBS covers the alleged issuance of “ghost tickets” at a marine national park that, at least in theory, has limits on the number of daily visitors allowed.)

Illegal structures demolished at Bang Tao Beach (The Phuket News on the removal of giant rock piles that a resort had placed on this popular Phuket beach.)

Police arrest 13 cannabis-smuggling ‘tourists’ at Samui airport (Bangkok Post joins a related mystery from Krabi Airport about someone who ditched a suitcase full of cannabis bound for Singapore in a locked airport bathroom and reportedly crawled out of the bathroom window before disappearing.)

Freed Thai fishermen reunite with families after Myanmar’s pardon (Thai PBS on the lengthy ordeal of a fishing crew that was arrested for straying into Myanmar’s territorial waters on November 30th of last year.)

I leave you with…

A somber note about the “trailblazing” Bangkok-based journalist and Nikkei Asia editor, Gwen Robinson, who recently died at age 65 after a battle with cancer. An obituary was published on her website, while Nikkei Asia, a news organization that she was instrumental in creating, has a more detailed piece about her life and work that relentlessly spread awareness about Southeast Asia.

Unfortunately, the region’s journalism community suffered several other losses recently. The long-running Voice of America and Radio Free Asia were among the latest victims of so-called “efficiency” cuts in the US. Also caught up in the American government’s shredding of overseas media and aid is Benar News, which has been forced to pause operations after its funding was withheld. All of these outlets have contributed much to covering a dynamic and fascinating region which, in my opinion, receives far too little attention from the rest of the world. 🌴

Thank you for reading Thai Island Quest, home of the Thai Island & Coastal Directory.