27/07/2026
In 2000, Leonardo DiCaprio starred in "The Beach," filmed on a hidden cove in Thailand called Maya Bay. The movie made it famous. Fame made it collapse. Within a decade, over 5,000 tourists a day were arriving, boats were anchoring directly on the coral, and the reef that made the place worth filming was dying. In 2018, Thailand closed Maya Bay completely — not for a season, for four years. When it reopened in 2022, the rules were permanent: no anchoring, a hard cap on visitors, and a mandatory closure every monsoon season so the bay never gets pushed that far again. The blacktip reef sharks came back. So did the coral. Hollywood found it. Overtourism nearly killed it. Thailand chose to save it anyway.
