Many people speak positively about Leela Beach, saying it’s a very beautiful beach, nearly the best on Koh Phangan, but personally it didn’t blow me away. Beautiful – yes, the best – no. Perhaps because it’s rather difficult to get to and the atmosphere isn’t quite my cup of tea. Or maybe because I visited Koh Phangan at the end of the rainy season and the weather wasn’t always sunny. And that, as you can imagine, doesn’t help with a positive mood.
Beach Overview
The beach is located at the foot of a steep slope along its entire length. Leela Beach isn’t the type where you can drive up to the sea anywhere and, without slowing down from the main road, drop your scooter and go for a swim. During my visit to Koh Phangan, the monsoons were just delivering their final wet performances, and the road down was mostly quite battered.
At one point I had to abandon my bike and continue on foot. But there is a way around this situation; I just didn’t realise it straight away, but more on this below in the “how to find the beach” section.
The beach is indeed beautiful, plus it’s also quite long – stretching approximately 1,600 feet (500 metres) from the rocks in the north to the rocks in the south. After walking along the beach, I’d say that Leela Beach is perfectly suited for quiet, peaceful hippy vibes, but definitely not for family holidays.
I definitely wouldn’t choose to stay here with a child for a long period. Perhaps just for a couple of hours to swim: been there, done that, got my feet wet in the sea. And to be fair, I should mention that Leela Beach faces southwest, and therefore offers a cracking view of Koh Samui on the horizon.
Swimming
The sand on the beach is “almost white”, which is an “almost traditional” feature for Koh Phangan; in the water there are small pebbles with shells that wash up with the waves, the entrance to the sea is gentle, long, the depth increases gradually and the swimmability of the beach depends heavily on the tides.
On the shore you’ll find large boulders, the size of a small house, which looks amusing against the backdrop of real houses that were built for hermit tourists behind the rocks and low twisted trees. Along the entire length of the beach, I didn’t notice any particular difference in where it’s better to swim; it was roughly the same everywhere.
Sunbeds and Shade
Low twisted trees grow along the entire water’s edge, but these aren’t mangroves because they don’t have those roots characteristic of mangroves. You can easily hide from the sun under the trees, and some already have swings and hammocks hung up, where people from the bungalows often sleep or swing. The rest of the narrow shore is occupied by bungalows.
The key word here is “narrow” because at low tide there’s still a fairly decent strip of sand, but during high tide the water comes right up to the trees and there’s no space left to walk along the sea.
Beach Photos
Left part near Coco Hut Village
Left and central parts near Leela Beach Resort
Amenities
The infrastructure of Leela Beach consists of: a long row of wooden bungalows, a large empty lot where rather noisy construction is taking place, there’s also the Cocohut Beach Resort & SPA with a restaurant, through which you can also access the beach, and around the corner, behind the rocks on the northern half of the beach is the Light House bar, which is actually a local attraction. For all other amenities, you’ll need to head towards Haad Rin.
There are no shops, even the smallest ones, on Leela Beach. Essentially, the beach is a part of Koh Phangan cut off from the outside world, where people live in huts with finger-thick gaps, smoke, drink, do yoga, meditate, sleep in hammocks – in general, do what any office worker would want to do.
Leela Beach is territorially located close to the famous Haad Rin, which is known for its Full Moon Parties. And at the Light House bar, which stands on Leela itself, they throw parties with hard techno once a week. It’s a noisy event, but thanks to its isolated location (behind a cliff), the noise from the party doesn’t disturb people resting on the beach.
Accommodation
At the spot where I first reached Leela Beach (the leftmost edge) a new resort was being built and there was quite a large-scale construction: tracked machinery, lots of construction waste, and part of the shore was covered with human rubbish, most likely as a result of recent flooding. In general, Leela Beach was all dug up and uncomfortably noisy.
The rest of Leela is situated amidst palm jungles, where literally a couple of resorts have found shelter: Cocohut Beach Resort & SPA and Leela Beach Bungalows. The first of which is rather decent, while the second is completely basic and with a low rating; even from the outside they look unsightly and hastily put together.
Also further away, even more to the left beyond the stone cape, there’s Lighthouse Bungalows & Restaurant, the very one where they hold techno parties. So I would recommend Leela Beach for those who want to rest in peace and in the one hundred percent atmosphere of a wild island. For me – it’s a bit too wild.
How to find the beach
Look for CocoHut Beach Resort & Spa on the internet map or by road signs; you’ll come across it first if coming from Haad Rin.
By the way – there’s a normal good road leading to it. You’ll need to turn left to the resort. There’s no point in going further past the resort on dirt roads, only if you need to get to the Lighthouse. Otherwise, you can easily go down to the beach through this resort and go right or left along the shore, finding yourself a spot in the shade of a tree.
The second option is to follow the signs to “Lighthouse”, which is the leftmost (northern) end of the beach. There, near a pretty wooden bridge leading along the cliffs to the Lighthouse, there will be a small parking area where you can leave your bike. Though the parking will be at the end of a rather steep descent, so be careful. All descents to the sea at Leela Beach are quite steep, keep that in mind.
Of course, you can go down somewhere in the middle where the road leads (there are several dirt roads) to Leela Beach Resort, but in my humble opinion this is a so-so option; it’s easy to get lost.
