There is a very nice community of people living in Lang Khaii. A good mix of foreigner and Thai. We consider ourselves sort of an independent group within the Koh Tao community. When something needs to get done, we go ahead and do it ourselves.

Lang Khaii is a small area, so there are not many people owning land there, therefore we all know each other pretty well. The immediate neighbors to this property are (names changed to initials to keep the privacy of my neighbors):

To the west: "F" and his wife. "F" is a 3 year resident of the island and is a retired Dutchman who occasionally works as a freelance diving instructor.
Southwest: "D" is a 13 year resident of the island and runs his own dive shop, resort and restaurant. He is known as being one of the best Yoga instructors on the island and hopes to start building his Yoga resort on his property starting in late 2008.
Southeast: "U" is a 10 year resident of the island and is the designer of some of the most inspiring buildings on Koh Tao: Jamakhiri [pic1 pic2 pic3 website] and ThipWimarn [pic1 pic2 website] among many other private residences [pic1]. His designs are known as Balinese Modern. He owns much of the land bordering plots 2 and 3 and has plans to build a housing development development [plans]. It will be his final project on Koh Tao and is aimed to be an upscale private community of luxury homes built with eco-friendly plans which work in to the landscape, not on top of them. I have his contact details and he has expressed an interest in doing designs for the owners of these plots so that all the homes in the area have the same feel. I can pass his details on upon request.
North: "T", a seldom heard from Thai owner who has no plans for his land yet.

Further around Lang Khaii are:



Before plots 1 and 2
Noks Garden Resort – quaint resort with small bungalows
Pahnun View Resort – Also comprised of small bungalows, this place has actually been in business for 13 years.
"G" – An island resident of 15 years he has built 2 houses in Lang Khaii, one he lives in and one he rents out. Guy is a manager of a dive shop and one of the most experienced PADI course directors on the island.

After plots 1 and 2
"J & M" – this couple lives in the magnificent teak house which "J" has built himself. A resident of the island for 7 years, he runs a tattoo shop and she is a chef.
"P" – "P" is another 10+ year resident and has just started to build his resort of small secluded bungalows.

There is a nice friendship among residents in the way that we help each other out with lending tools, workers, and tips. As I built my first small bungalow, I was spending a lot of time trucking bags of cement in my little Suzuki to my property 15 bags at a time because I couldn’t find anyone to deliver to Lang Khaii (at the time the road was not paved). One of my neighbors said he knew someone who could deliver, and just asked me what I needed. He offered to have it brought out for free as part of his next few loads, and put on his bill and I could just pay him, saving me the hassle of going to the office. It ended up costing me less than what I was paying direct at the store.

We’ve all lent each other tools, electricity lines, water, landscaping staff, trucks. When the road needed to be paved, we all pitched in 50,000b each to have it paved so now the access is easy to drive. We’re planning on doing the same for some nice cement electric poles in 2008. We know that the government is not going to pay for any of this in Lang Khaii for a long time, so we would like to make our area better looking and better accessable and are willing to work together to make it happen.