Andrew Biggs finds himself in a sticky situation — and that’s just to get into the limo to get to the boat to get to Koh Tao.

Koh Tao is a beautiful island, a piece of paradise, but there is also a dark side, as Myanmar workers have discovered

As the trial of the two Myanmar accused of murdering British tourists starts on Koh Tao, where do you think your favourite columnist is filing his story from this week? Greetings, dear reader, from Koh Tao, the island once named by Time magazine as a trendy world tourist destination only days before somebody savagely raped and murdered Hannah Witheridge, as well as killing her companion David Miller.

My two Australian nephews aged 18 and 21 are here, visiting their eccentric uncle who pops into their lives intermittently. I offered them the choice of exploring age-old Buddhist temples in the North, or sitting on an island beach drinking beer in the South. Hey, they’re 18 and 21.

Time magazine was right. This really is a piece of paradise.

Koh Tao is a dot in the Gulf of Thailand just north of Phangnan, which is just north of Samui. We wandered from our resort south of Mae Had Beach up to Sairee Beach two kilometres away, and locals expressed astonishment we had gone so far on foot. Or perhaps their astonishment was owing to the fact we survived; Koh Tao’s skinny concrete roads are scarred with two alarming dangers; a lack of footpath and a slew of foreign tourists on motorbikes.

Being of an opinionated type, here are four important observations about the island.

1. It’s an adhesive journey to get here. Upon arriving at Samui airport, we tell an attractive young lady we’re going to Koh Tao.

“Here,” she says. “Wear this. Then wait over there for the limousine service.” She hands over three round pink stickers with KOH TAO emblazoned on them for everyone to see. I feel like branded cattle. Is the young lady worried I may abscond to Phangnan, or worse, continue on past Koh Tao to Chumphon?

As my close friends can attest, my outfits are carefully chosen and colour-coordinated. I never expected to include a big friggin’ pink sticker disrupting the entire colour flow. I consider sticking it onto my inner thigh by way of protest, only what would happen if it fell off?

As all this passes through my head I turn to consult my two nephews, but they have already stuck them onto their chests and have moved on with their lives. That wasn’t the last of it.

After waiting for our limousine, a Thai word that means “battered white van with no handles to clutch onto while riding over potholes”, we reach the jetty and make our way to the ferry counter. A friendly lady hands over tickets — and another swathe of stickers.

“Stick the pink round sticker on yourself, and the long ones are for your luggage,” she says. More stickers?

By the time I reached Koh Tao I resemble the back of a Thai pickup truck. My beachwear is blotted with two big pink stickers and a long pink one is ruining the contours of my Benetton suitcase. The most bizarre thing is, nobody even glances at them.

The two Koh Tao ferry ticket collectors only want our paper tickets, one of whom keeps shouting “One by one! One by one!”, which is curious since there are two of them collecting tickets.

2. Koh Tao makes you feel old. Having spent three days here I can report with confidence that the average age of a Koh Tao tourist is 21 years. The bell curve rises at 19 years and flattens out again at 24. Where does that leave me?

This is a young, fun island without, so far, the ear-splitting mega-nightclubs of Pattaya or Silom. One dead giveaway is the absence of WE HAVE VIAGRA signs on drug stores so prevalent in Pattaya or Silom; who needs Viagra when you’re 21 and in paradise?

Koh Tao’s economy is diving and I have never seen so many dive shops crammed into such a small area. The diving is spectacular thanks to unpolluted waters, abundant marine life and a shipwreck to explore.

My two nephews went out diving (as I relaxed beachside with Orhan Pamuk and Uncle Smirnoff, not in that order) and they came back wide-eyed. “We dived into a school of angel fish — did you know they’re monogamous? We saw barracuda and trigger fish and clownfish swimming among sea anemones!”

This is comforting. Phangan can have its drug-crazed full-moon parties. Pattaya and Silom can have its sex. Koh Tao can relax with its diving.

3. I have seen the future. Koh Tao lacks a few things; a department store, for example. A cinema. A bowling alley. But what it really lacks is any Thainess.

This is an island populated by foreign tourists and Myanmar. Every single waiter and waitress in every single restaurant we visited was Myanmar. Every maid, bellboy, receptionist, cook, construction worker and fisherman is Myanmar. I am fluent in Thai; I may as well be fluent in Khmer for all it got me on Koh Tao. This makes sense considering the local population is officially about 2,000. We did stumble across an entire moo ban of Thais between Mae Had and Sairee beaches, perched on a hill, as if trying to distance itself from the foreign shenanigans below. (There’s a temple and school there with some cryptic posters displayed. I include them on this page — what is the “I am farang” one all about? And Putin is number one what?)

With no Thais, and everything in English, it is a little weird that you are required to take off your shoes before entering any shop, bar or restaurant here. I was confused as to why they would hold on so strictly to this until it was pointed out to me it had less to do with ageold Thai tradition and more to do with sand.

“You should see the islands in the Andaman,” said our favourite Myanmar waiter last night. He had returned from dispensing of an errant snake and squirrel in one of the bungalows. “They are untouched.”

“I don’t t hink so,” I replied. “I’ve been to almost all of them and they are sadly overdeveloped.”

“I don’t mean the Thai Andaman; I mean the Myanmar Andaman. We have many islands just like Thailand.”

That should be chilling news for the Tourism Authority of Thailand. The future could well be in the untouched islands of Myanmar, and when that happens, vast tracts of Thailand’s tourist destinations will empty of young tourists — along with its manual labour.

And if you want to know what it’s like spending time on a Myanmar beach resort, just head over to Koh Tao.

4. The island with the secret. During my stay I have taken numerous taxi rides, the one industry controlled by Thais, and on each of them I ask: What about the murders last year?

Have you ever seen a face go dark? It happened every time I asked, and it is clear the island of Koh Tao knows more than it is saying.

“Everybody knows who killed them,” say two different taxi drivers on two separate occasions. When I ask who, they clam up. When I ask if it is the Myanmar pair on trial this week, one of them laughs and the other makes a strange squiggle motion with his hand.

I have to admit at first I was hesitant in bringing my nephews here. On our walking trip to Sairee Beach we pass the AC Bar and Resort, where the two British tourists left to get murdered. I get a chill as I pass, not unlike the chill I got while slinking past the Koh Tao police station at the top of the hill.

And yet the fear is unfounded. Locals may be harbouring Thailand’s worst-kept secret, but they are also bruised from last year’s crime and for this reason it may well be one of the safer places to visit. Don’t get me wrong; the murders were a tragedy. But the greatest tragedy of Koh Tao may be unfolding in the courts this week, rather than the murder itself.

On that note we must board the ferry back to the mainland, leaving behind Koh Tao and its diving paradise, its Myanmar population, its marine life and its wildlife of snakes and squirrels and scapegoats.