Good Riddance

It wasn’t until I saw Lonely Planet’s mention of Alex Garland in their bit on Koh Phi Phi that I remembered the movie Miléna was talking about. The Beach by Alex Garland. We read the book and then watched the movie (shot mostly in Koh Phi Phi) in Bryce’s class senior year.

For those who haven’t read The Beach, it is about a hippie commune on a tropical and isolated island. If I remember correctly things get a little nutty-- there’s a strong cult aspect, a bit of brainwashing going on and the like. I remember little from the book and less from the movie, but one thing I’ve always remembered. Every night in the bunkroom where the island’s inhabitants slept one person would start the goodnight chain, “Goodnight Joe”, “Goodnight Cindy”, etc. until every person had said good night and had heard ‘Good Night’ addressed to him. At a point in my life when I was spending a lot of time sleeping in a bunkroom myself as the insecure “new kid”, I liked the idea because it was charming and inclusive-- two concepts you’d have to spin pretty hard on their heads to get them to represent Koh Phi Phi now.

How do you describe Koh Phi Phi? Take Nantucket, move it to the equator, add some palm trees, a lot of Europeans, overflowing booze buckets, and way too much Jack Johnson and then you kind of have Koh Phi Phi. A mention of the grubby kittens, the lack of cars but still very very crowded streets, and chintzy jewelry hawkers doesn’t hurt either.

Koh Phi Phi was all of the bad parts of tourism, from consumerism to congestion to litter, with very little space left over for the good stuff.

So… what do you do when faced with Koh Phi Phi? Walk around with your nose in the air because you’re above the grime and debauchery? Get a load on so you’re just one of the drunks, now able to forget the scene you’re helping to create? Ideally, I wish I could have found some way to educate myself about what I was experiencing, taking time to acknowledge my feelings about my surroundings. Sitting with Miléna in 4 inch deep water of a beautiful turquoise blue (albeit with a juice box floating next to Miléna’s hand), I was the closest to relaxed I’ve been in a long time. The reason people crowd to beaches isn’t arbitrary, something about it is refreshingly serene. The problem is there are just too many of us doing the flocking.

When we disembarked the ferry we couldn’t leave the pier until we had handed over our 20 baht for the “Keep Phi Phi Clean” campaign, but I couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t just ask each individual to donate 30 minutes to cleaning the shores. Furthermore, why not make it educational? Let us know where our 20 baht is going, show people how clean up on the island works, install some freakin trash cans and then pay someone to remove them. As anyone who knows me even a little bit can attest, I could vent for a while on this topic, but this time I have little knowledge to go on… embarrassingly I never asked anyone there about the environmental situation.

My excuses for why I didn’t ask are lame, and probably in line with why most well-intentioned people leave Phi Phi in a fog. Our first day there I was so overwhelmed I had all I could do just to walk around and stare. And my second day? Well, rather than aggressively accosting the “environmentalists” on the boat dock I found myself groggily moving through a stupor induced by the consumption of too many beer buckets and too much pee pee water. People come to Phi Phi to party, and there were so many young people around it was hard not to get caught up in the atmosphere, despite my most admirable moral intentions.

Expeditions of this sort always leave me with a bit of a moral dilemma. As my habits have slowly fallen in line with my morals/lifestyle (eg: vegetarian, trying as much as possible to buy only things I need) I find myself in a predicament when at a place like Koh Phi Phi. I’m okay with some extravagance as long as it is sustainable. Damn, cuz as far as I know, extravagance is inherently unsustainable. Particularly given the way we as humans are living today. Koh Phi Phi is a tiny island and cannot handle the number of tourists it receives daily. Their water and sewer dumps straight into the ocean, there is trash littering the cove as well as the beaches on either side, and when it rains… well… expect to be walking knee deep in sewage as you make your way home at 3 AM in the middle of a downpour. It was an “experience” and if nothing else, it incited within me some desire to act. As opposed to feeling hopeless against the problems it strengthened my desire to live the life I see as good, regardless of how others choose to live around me.

Good bye Koh Phi Phi, I hope you have the time of your life.