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| Maya Beach on Koh Phi Phi Leh photo by Wikimedia Commons user Ahoerstemeier |
Finding an island utopia is everyone’s dream, right? Well, if you’ve read “The Beach” or seen the movie, you know that even if you find what you think looks perfect, it’s always going to be a little more complicated than that. Still, the allure of an island like that is too much for most people to resist – which is one of the reasons the locations in Thailand where “The Beach” was filmed are now a major tourist attraction.
Most of the 2000 movie adaptation of the novel “The Beach” was filmed on the island of Koh Phi Phi Leh in Thailand’s Krabi province, on a beach known as Maya Beach. It’s a relatively small island, and prior to the movie’s release it wasn’t nearly as popular as the much larger Koh Phi Phi Don island to the north. Not only that, but the island was also a major source of controversy as they were attempting to film the movie.
While Koh Phi Phi Leh was already seemingly idyllic, the film’s producers thought they could improve on what nature had provided. In altering Maya Beach to make it more perfect, they changed some of the existing sand dunes, bulldozed parts of the beach, and removed some of the coconut trees to expand the beach area itself. Needless to say, this didn’t go over too well with local environmental groups, who weren’t satisfied with the film company’s promise to return the beach to the way they’d found it once they were done filming.
The environmentalists filed lawsuits in Thailand which were only resolved in 2006 when the Thai Supreme Court ruled that the landscape alterations the filmmakers had made had actually harmed the beach and the environment. But in what is perhaps a fitting irony, the environment of Maya Beach was reportedly improved by the 2004 Tsunami – the waves actually swept away much of the extraneous landscaping the filmmakers had added to the beach – so whether or not the Supreme Court’s ruling will have any real effect now remains to be seen.
Today, Koh Phi Phi Leh and Maya Beach are both wildly popular with tourists, who are eager to visit the utopian island they saw in the movie (however fictional it was). But as Koh Phi Phi Leh is small enough to not even have any places to stay on the whole island, if you’re one of the people who wants to visit Maya Beach you’ll need to make a day-trip of it. There are lots of half-day tours from Koh Phi Phi Don island, many of which have several stops – including Maya Beach.
(And just for the record, the author of the novel “The Beach,” Alex Garland, says it’s a fictional place. So don’t write to him asking for the real location he wrote about. Really.)
When the movie of “The Beach” was first released, there were groups calling for people to boycott the film because of the damage they felt the movie had done to Maya Beach. For more about the controversy, see this interesting account of the various protests and legal action which revolved around the movie. This nice collection of Salon articles about the film and the book is also worth perusing, if you’re determined to find your own utopia.
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