A closer look
Maya Bay in Thailand, made globally famous by the Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Beach, was completely destroyed by its own popularity to the point where the marine ecosystem collapsed and the government had to shut it down for nearly four years. Up to five thousand people and two hundred motorboats were cramming into the tiny cove every single day, completely obliterating the coral reefs and terrifying the local blacktip reef sharks. The exquisite irony of traveling halfway across the world to experience an untouched, secret utopian paradise from a movie is that you instantly become part of the suffocating, sunscreen-slathered mob that successfully transforms that exact paradise into a toxic, dying wasteland
