Maya Beach was allowed to recover for three and a half years.

Since the American backpacker Richard Fischer discovered the beach in the film "The Beach", the quiet there was over: Fischer, played by the young Leonardo DiCaprio, is looking for an adventure, a real journey beyond vacation destinations.

And he finds it in the most beautiful bay in the world, on the Thai island group Ko Phi Phi.

But as it is with Hollywood: Where DiCaprio was in 2000, millions of people quickly wanted to go.

Caroline O. Jebens

Editor in the Society department at FAZ.NET.

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In the film, Fischer has to swim to the island. In real life, the tourists did not want to and could not do this: Speedboats brought them from the mainland 30 kilometers away to the island and docked directly in the bay. Up to 200 boats a day dropped their anchors carelessly in coral reefs, and the tourists who disembarked left their empty plastic bottles in the sand. Around 5000, sometimes 7000 visitors crowded the 250-meter-long piece of paradise every day, bathing their sunscreen, peeing in the turquoise-blue lagoon water. Certainly, like fishermen, pondered how city dwellers could actually still experience adventures.

Marine biologist and probably Thailand's most prominent conservationist Thon Thamrongnawasawat said in an interview in 2019 that many people didn't seem to mind sitting crammed together on a beach that promises loneliness: Many come from such huge cities that they are used to it anyway to be surrounded by crowds. It was also Thamrongnawasawat who launched the initiative to close the beach. The archipelago was actually a marine national park before, but tourism was not controlled or even regulated there because it is an important economic factor: 20 percent of Thailand's gross domestic product comes from tourism. The overcrowded Maya Beach brought in 400 million baht (10.7 million euros) in sales a year.After years of negotiations, the beach was finally closed in 2018.

Now you can visit it again, but only according to certain rules: the first are allowed to come at 7 a.m., the last have to leave at 6 p.m., each visit is limited to one hour.

A maximum of 4125 people are allowed to stroll through the white sand per day, and a maximum of 375 tourists in one hour.

An hour sounds short, but bathing is no longer permitted anyway.

Anyone who does so must expect legal consequences.

Visitors also have to reach the bay on foot, boats are only allowed to anchor on the other side of the island, as the news site "The Thaiger" reported.

However, the beach will never be as beautiful as it is in the film: For the shooting, the production company had the beach smoothed with bulldozers and some palm trees felled.

After all, it should appear heavenly.