After a few days on the west side of Koh Phangan I went on a day trip to Thong Nai Pan and fell in love with Yai beach and decided to move there for the rest of my stay on the island. I was expecting to pay a lot more for accommodation on that side of Koh Phangan but a friend recommended Baan Panburi village. Wow! Beautiful garden, clean bungalows and the best service I had on this island. All that for a very reasonable price. Great place to stay!

Yes, this is one of the best values on the beach. Yes it is right on the beach -- we had one of the closest bungalows to the beach. And it was nice to sit on the porch watching the shore and the kids. But, if you are traveling with a family, you may want to look elsewhere. The bungalows are very small, mosquitoes abound away from the beach, and the bungalows near the beach are quite noisy at night because the restaurant is right there. The restaurant itself is barely adequate. Service is nothing special, and dogs roam the premises and have a habit of making a deposit in from of your cabin (this happened to us twice in 7 days). We found the mattresses dirty and the smell a little dank. Other cabins had worse smell problems. The bathroom is open to the air for some reason, meaning that you shower while dodging mosquitoes. While our hot water did work, other people staying there told us they had no hot water.


Bottomline: My advice is that if you do not care about quality, cleanliness, and comfort, but you do want to save a lot of money, then this is the place for you. Otherwise, pay a little more for something nicer.

I can see from the reviews that some people are expecting the top of the range hotel on the beach!
We went there for 7 nights and it was fabulous! Obviously we had THE best hut which is the closest on the beach and yes, it is facing the restaurant/ reception and next to the massage table..... erm....! Yeah! Brilliant! We have made the effort to learn a bit of Thai, a bit of respect for our hosts and we had a great service! They were all very hospitable and friendly!
I could unfortunately sense that they had been desappointed before by other guests, and the tone would be very different with other people staying in the resort expecting everything!
Relax!
However, I have to say that having some holiday flats, here in the UK I can definitively understand how hard it is to keep the linen tip top white and maybe a few staines but clean! so no worries!

We stayed at Baan Panburi for a week and enjoyed it! I would highly recommend getting the Sea View Hut, with AC, Fan, the entire package, basically the best hut you could get on the property. We were lucky enough to get the hut S1, which it only entirely beach facing sea view hut on the property. You can still see the beach from the other Sea View huts, but if I'm paying the same price I'd rather get an unobstructed view. Overall the service is outstanding and the rooms are cleaned daily, so don't worry about tracking sand inside.

Yai beach is also one of the quieter beaches so staying at one end of the beach we did not hear any noises past 10pm. The property doesn't have a pool or a fitness center, but you're on the beach! It's a 1/2 mile stretch which makes for perfect morning run...who needs a treadmill!