Pi Pi Island is Dead and Gone

It’s thirty years since I first went to Pi Pi Island, Thailand with Bucko and a lot has changed here, and not for the better.  Well I guess that depends on your perspective.  If you are a developer with interests on this island it’s a better world than before.  But if you enjoy seeing live coral, and smooth uncluttered sandy beaches and native tropical vegetation covering the inland mountain, it’s just too bad.  All this is gone.

I’m traveling memory lane here in Thailand, revisiting friends and places from long ago, and with a free weekend to escape from the city, Pi Pi Island made it to the top of my list.  It’s worlds away from Bangkok, but not really. All it took was a taxi, a plane, a minivan, a ferry, a long-tailed boat and 8 hours from start to finish and I was sitting on the beach waiting for my fresh prawns to be cooked with the Andaman Sea lapping at my feet.

Sounds great, right?  Well that was before I ventured further the next day.  I took a half-day boat trip, with the masses, to see the famous sights.  Monkey Island, Maya Beach, Viking Cave and even some snorkeling thrown in.  Bring it on!  

But what a let down.  No longer the pristine place of long ago, this place is crowded!  I was on one of maybe 20 1/2day tourist boats, packed cheek to cheek with twenty people crowded into narrow benches.  But I was in front and could see the scenery.  Good right?  Well even from my vantage point I could barely take a photo without another boat in the picture, hundreds of boats, not only snorkel boats like mine, but large speed boats crammed with economy passengers and small speed boats hired by the wealthy and here for the day.

The first stop, Monkey Island, was really the edge of the subsidiary island here, where a feeding platform lured in monkeys.  Our boat waited in a line of other boats waiting to get our chance to get close and let foolish passengers try to get their picture taken while the monkeys looked for their chance to bite them.

Next stop, Maya Bay, the location where the The Beach was filmed in 1999, a movie about people trying to get away from it all on a secluded beach in southern Thailand.  Not so secluded now.  We had to pay an additional $5 just for the opportunity of crowding in with dozens of other boats of all sizes, all discharging passengers for 40 minutes of walking thru crowds on the beach, or swimming with the masses.  It reminded me of the beaches in New Jersey in my younger days, where you couldn’t even find a place to spread your towel.  No thanks, I’ll just wait on the boat.

Oh and then there was the snorkeling stop.  Hurray, I was going to see the colorful coral and sea fans and butterfly fish and angel fish and giant clams I remembered from my last visit here.  I was the first to jump off the boat with my prescription mask in hand.  Let me at it!

But no.  The coral here was all dead, bleached chunks of rock now, lifeless. The butterfly fish and angelfish and parrotfish that feed on live coral?  Gone.  The live sea fans in all colors?  Gone.  All there was were a few sergeant major fish and sea cucumbers—both common signs of degraded marine ecosystems, and a few pale sea anemones with the most common type of clownfish hiding in the tentacles.  

The situation on land on Pi Pi Island is similar.  It is chock a block full of hotels and cabanas and huts and all around the sounds of construction of many more. The walkways are cluttered with trinket shops, massage and tattoo parlors, bars and restaurants all full of mostly European and Japanese tourists, thousands of them all crowded on the walkways and beaches of this little island only 5 miles long and 2 miles wide.  The once vegetation-covered hill in the interior is now full of hotels all the way to the top and down again on both sides.  And most seem to be full to capacity.  Pi Pi Island, it seems is THE place to go.

The developers and builders and tourist operators are obviously making a killing here, but what has already been killed is the natural beauty of the place. To me, despite the hubbub, Pi Pi Island is dead and gone. 

And, I couldn’t help thinking about another island I still hold dear to my heart, Amelia Island.  Please people, let’s not let this happen to us!