Koh Phangan Wildlife: Dogs, Monkeys, Snakes and What to Do

The animals you meet, and the ones you don't

Most wildlife writing about Thai islands is either a checklist of species you will never see or a scare piece about snakes. What follows is the ordinary version: the animals that actually turn up on a two-week trip to Koh Phangan, in the order you are likely to meet them, and what is worth doing about each.

The island helps explain the mix. It is roughly 120 km², and a large share of the interior — more than 80 km² by one local estimate — is protected forest rising to Khao Ra at 632 m. That means a thin ring of villages and beaches around a forested middle, so jungle animals are never far from where people live. Anywhere inland, including the hills above Maduawan, you are effectively staying at the edge of that forest.

Dogs

Dogs are the animal you will meet first and most often. They sleep on warm concrete, doze under restaurant tables, follow you along a beach for a while, and come to life after dark.

A few things make the difference between dogs being background scenery and being a problem:

• Slow down rather than speed up. A dog that runs at a scooter is usually defending fifty metres of road. Accelerating turns a bark into a chase; easing off and riding steadily past nearly always ends it.
• Ride with your feet on the pegs. Kicking out at a dog at speed is how people come off.
• Don't feed them at your table. It is the fastest way to acquire a dog for the rest of your holiday, and it teaches begging behaviour that ends badly for the dog once you fly home.
• Leave sleeping dogs alone, especially at night on unlit roads. Full-beam headlights and a slow approach are worth more than any noise you make.

Most of the island's dogs are healthier than they look. The reason is PACS — Phangan Animal Care for Strays — which has been working on the island since 2001. It is an animal hospital that treats wounds, sets broken bones, sterilises and vaccinates, all free for strays. It runs on donations and volunteers rather than any government funding, and its own figures put the work at around 80 sterilisations a month. PACS credits that long vaccination and sterilisation programme with keeping the island free of rabies and the stray population stable.

If you want to do something useful with an hour, PACS lists volunteer dog walks twice a day — its social media shows walks at 9.30 and 15.30, with the clinic open Monday to Friday, 8.30 to 16.30. Times and requirements change, so check their current posts before turning up, and take dog-walking shoes rather than flip-flops.

If you are bitten or scratched

Thailand as a whole is a rabies-endemic country, so a bite or a scratch that breaks the skin — from a dog, a cat, a monkey, any mammal — is treated seriously regardless of how well vaccinated the local animals are.

The standard advice is unglamorous and it matters: wash the wound with soap under running water for a good fifteen minutes, then get to a clinic the same day rather than waiting to see how it looks tomorrow. Post-exposure treatment is a course of vaccine doses over the following weeks, and for deeper bites, rabies immunoglobulin as well.

The practical caveat for island travellers is that immunoglobulin is not always stocked on small islands, even where the vaccine course is. Clinics on Koh Phangan do treat animal bites and start the vaccine series; whether they can also give immunoglobulin on the day is worth asking directly, because if not, the answer is a ferry to Samui or the mainland rather than a wait. If you had the pre-exposure vaccine before travelling, the treatment is shorter and immunoglobulin isn't needed — which is the main argument for having it done at home. We've covered clinics, hospitals and insurance in more detail elsewhere in the journal.

Monkeys

Long-tailed macaques live on Koh Phangan but are not spread evenly across it. Local wildlife writing puts the most reliably seen troop in the hills around Haad Rin, often right beside the road, sometimes down among the coconut palms and power lines near the beach.

They are easy to photograph and best left at that. Feeding wild macaques changes their behaviour quickly: they learn to associate people with food, then to take it, and a monkey that snatches from tourists is a monkey that will eventually be removed. A bite or scratch from one is also a rabies exposure, with the same clock running as a dog bite.

Snakes, lizards and the rest of the house

Snakes exist here and are seen far less often than people expect. Long-term residents describe the genuinely dangerous species on Koh Phangan as the monocled cobra and the king cobra, with no evidence of kraits on the island; most encounters are with harmless species crossing a path and leaving.

Sensible habits cover almost everything: carry a torch after dark rather than relying on a phone, don't step over logs or reach into leaf litter blind, keep steps and terraces clear, and don't try to move or photograph a snake close up. If someone is bitten, keep them still, don't apply a tourniquet, and call 1669 — antivenom lives in hospitals, not clinics.

The rest of the cast is benign. Water monitors — large, prehistoric-looking lizards — patrol ponds and streams and will leave if you give them room. Geckos live on every ceiling and eat mosquitoes. Scorpions turn up occasionally in the forest. Shake out shoes left outside overnight and that is broadly the extent of the precautions.

Staying in the forest

Building into jungle rather than clearing it means more of this at close range. At Villa Ullassa the boulders and nearly all the trees were kept, which is pleasant for guests and better for everything else living on the hill: geckos on the terrace at dusk, birds in the canopy, occasionally something larger crossing a path between buildings.

The trade is straightforward. You get a house inside the forest instead of beside it, and in return you keep a torch by the door, walk the stone paths rather than the undergrowth at night, and leave the animals to get on with their evening.