Koh Phangan is known as the home to Thailand’s famous — or infamous — Full Moon Parties, when thousands of backpackers descend on the island for a couple nights of revelry.
About 45 minutes by ferry from the mainland and without an airport, Phangan has managed to hold on, for the most part, to a slightly more rural, laidback atmosphere than much of Thailand’s overdeveloped coast.
It’s also home to a good friend of mine and where I got my scuba certification last year, so I was troubled to hear that it is facing a severe drought.
“It’s OK for us as our house has a well!” my friend wrote. “But the rest of the island is truly suffering.”
Island life has many things to offer, but easy access to provisions isn’t one of them. A water shortage on Koh Phangan means lots and lots of water bottles brought across by ferry, as well as cutting back to a twice-daily water distribution system. Islanders depend on natural water sources that have run dry, and this week the governor of the province declared Koh Phangan a drought-stricken area.
But in March, Koh Phi Phi, on the Andaman Coast, was also struck by drought, and 50 percent of the north and northeast was drought-affected by April.
Southern Thailand should have hit the rainy season already. Throughout the country, May tends to be a month of heavy rainfall. June is a bit more dry along the gulf coast (including Koh Phangan, Pattaya and Koh Samui), but the western coast (Phuket) is usually in the throes of the rainy season, which lasts through October.
For a little context, by this time in 2011, much of Thailand was facing floods.
There are a lot of fingers to be pointed here. Climate change? Poor water management? Growing consumption? Perhaps a little of all of these things.
According to The Water Project, “Like other Asian countries, increasing population, urbanization, agricultural and industrial expansion [in Thailand] is impacting the water quality of various water sources.”
Water scarcity is something we might all be facing in the coming years, but when you compound lack of water with questionable water quality and poor infrastructure, you end up in crisis.
