Koh Bida Nok is one of the most popular dive sites in South west Thailand. It’s a small island boasting wall diving and shallow reefs. 
Koh Bida Noi and Koh Bida Nai lie to the south of Phi Phi islands, belonging to Phi Phi Archipelago. Together with Hin Bida they are known as The Bida Islands. 

On a sunny Sunday morning I joined my friend Gianluca from Sea Gypsy Divers on board a brand new half catamaran half speed boat called the Ocean Manta for a dive adventure around the Phi Phi archipelago.
It had been a long long time since my last dive, about 3 years exactly, and I wasn’t sure what to expect from myself as a diver and from the marine environment of the area we were going to visit. 
So I was a little nervous when I woke up at down in Klong Muang, but as soon as I grabbed my bag and hopped on my bike for the short ride to Sea Gypse’s office in central Ao Nang, I forgot all my worries and became excited for the day ahead.

At the office I met some of the other customers, we checked the equipment then we drove together to Port Tacola, the newest harbour just outside Ao Nang, where our boat was waiting.
Port Tacola is not affected by the tides as other piers in the area, and we could board the Ocean Manta through the main dock, loading all the equipment on trolleys for the short walk from the parking lot to the boat. 
When we arrived at the pier, it was hard to miss that beautiful boat even among all the other catamarans and speed boat: the Ocean Manta was shining in the sun, all polished and neat, the prow pointing to the outer sea, eager to start her first official mission. 
The boat has two very distinct zones, one dedicated to divers, on the back, and one in the front, for cruising, eating and chatting. The outside area, at the front, is spacious and super comfortable, and can easily accomodate 15 people. 
Sun lovers rest assured: you can easily bask in the sun in between dives. I surely did that day!

Onboard I was introduced to the rest of the divers and snorkelers, the crew and the Finnish couple who are the owner of the Fast Manta. 
The name is appropriate: the boat mounts 2 huge Mercury engines of 300 CC, and thanks to her catamaran shape it’s very stable and elegant on top of being fast. 
We sat down at the tables in the lounge area and enjoyed the morning breeze and the splendid Krabi scenery while the boat departed. 

It only took 1 hour and 10 minutes before we reached the first dive site, Bida Nok! That was really fast! I barely had the time to eat a slice of chocolate cake and prepare my equipment! 

From the surface Bida Nok appears as a stunning limestone peak jutting vertically of the water. Underwater, it’s all about coral gardens, caves divers can swim through and vertical walls covered in soft corals.  
Black tip sharks and leopard sharks are often seen parading around Bida Nok and typical reef fish like Clown Fish, red goby, angel fish, honeycomb eels can be spotted among the corals.
As soon as we approached Bida, the first shark appeared. We saw it from the boat, way before we were ready to jump in the water. Call it a welcome!

There was only another boat at the site, with a few snorkelers already in the water, but by the time we dove in, the black tip was still around. And it wasn’t alone. We saw three swimming in circle in very shallow waters, relaxed, not at all disturbed by us humans.

It was exciting to use a Go Pro during the dive for the first time, and I was so focused on getting on film everything that we saw that I was surprised once I realized the 60 minute dive was over. It was time to get on board.

On my first underwater movie I got the shark, a squid, some nudibranch, a baby  banded sea snake, a ghost pipe fish, a group of large sea fans, some parrot fish and many more corals and creatures. 
Turtles, barracudas and sting rays are often resting on the sandy area in the southern side, but we didn’t see any this time.

Back on board we cleaned our equipment and prepared the tanks for the second dive. 
Lunch was served at the tables in the front covered area, consisting of a mix of fragrant white rice and diced tempeh in sesame seeds (or something similar that I can’t name, but very delicious). 
We drank filtered water and soft drinks and there was some chocolate brownie as dessert, plus fresh fruits like pineapple and watermelon. 

The only thing I really missed, but I hope the Ocean Manta guys will make it available in the future, was some hot coffee. A simple, instant coffee mix with hot water would be enough even for a coffee addict like myself. 
I think that in between dives, specially if you get cold easily like I do all the time, some hot beverage would be very welcomed.

After lunch we had some time to relax or bask in the sun while the Ocean Manta headed to Phi Phi Leh. 
We stopped for sightseeing and photo snaps at the entrance of Maya Bay,  then we continued North along the coast of the island until we moored in a spot called Maya Nui, close to another dive site called Mushroom.

We could choose which one to dive, and we opted for the first one, more favourable given that a mild current was expected to rise by the time we finished the dive, and we could use it to push us back to the boat.
I honestly didn’t expect much from Maya Nui, but I was wrong. 
Visibility wasn’t as great as in Bida, however we managed to spot black tip sharks again, and soon after a big, lazy, friendly turtle appeared, and decided to stay with us for part of our dive. She elegantly swam with us, keeping the same level and direction, then rising for breath on the surface before diving back down to us.

I love turtles and I was busy admiring her while, in the corner of an eye, I spotted a big octopus bouncing out at full speed from a cave. 

I don’t know what pushed it to jump out, but it happened at the perfect time: the octopus was the biggest I’ve seen so far, and the bravest too. 
From my experience, they don’t stick around mixing with divers for long, but this octopus did. 
He started to show off, I would say, so much so that at the end of the dive my friend Bruno, who’s been a diver for 50 years, said: “I was about to ask him to leave, what was wrong with him wanting all the attention?”. 
Of course he was joking, besotted as I was with the curious and friendly octopus.

Maya Nui is a shallow dive, but it boasts some colourful corals, large dramatic rocks and some interesting macro: It took me a while to see the tiny transparent shrimps that Gianluca was pointing to me.
Then, while we were ascending for the safety stop at the end of a 1 hour dive, a school of fish encircled us and I failed to understand the gesture Gianluca was doing to tell me what they were. 
I got it later, but I enjoyed the swirling of the group none the less, they looked like a circus set up to amuse us during the required stop. 
They were a large school of baby barracudas!

Back on board, more fruit and another piece of brownie, then we packed the diving gears and got ready to cruise back. 
Again, the journey back was extremely smooth and fast: we all gathered on the outside deck to bid farewell to Phi Phi islands and to the adventurous day, and while the sky got dark and cloudy behind us we entered Tacola Pier and partied. 
Hugs and googbyes, a few more photos, a pleasant ride back on my bike, riding ahead of the storm, and by 4.30 pm I was at home in Klong Muang, which is quite amusing considering that I had left Tacola pier at 9 AM in the morning and experienced so much in a such a short span of time.
​
Can’t wait to go diving again, that’s for sure!

For the divers: what is your favorite diving spot in the world?
Share it in the comment, and I'll share mine. 

Have you read "The Beach" by Alex Garland? If not, perhaps you have seen the movie, starring a young Leonardo Di Caprio. Well, Maya Bay is The Beach.
Alex Garland was thinking of Palawan, Philippines, when he wrote his novel about a secluded, heavenly location which somehow attracts the attention of the neurotic American traveller Richard; however the movie based on Garland's novel was filmed in Thailand, particularly in Phi Phi Leh, a cliff jugged little island in Krabi Province.

Before the shooting, in 1999, Ao Maya ("ao" meaning "bay" in Thai language)  was a stunning sugary white beach in sleepy Phi Phi Leh, only visited by small groups of travellers that slept in Phi Phi Don, the bigger island nearby, and rented local boats from the locals for day trips to Maya Bay.
Despite being located between Phuket and Krabi provinces, the Phi Phi Islands were almost unknown to mass tourism until the movie became a sensation.
A local village of wooden shacks and unpaved roads, Ton Sai, was the only inhabited settlement of Phi Phi Don, while Phi Phi Leh was simply a natural sanctuary where monitor lizards, eagles and colourful marine species were the only residents.  

I fell in love with the place in 1993, way before Hollywood chose it as movie set and people started to flock in. Year after year, every January or February, I used to spend some lazy days in Maya Bay  with my family and a few other lucky travellers: it was so stunning and quiet, so dreamy like, so tremendously marvellous that I couldn't kick it out of my mind and kept going back.
I was in Phi Phi Leh even while Di Caprio was filming the movie, and I witnessed some of the changes that the film production made to the beach: the removing of wild vegetation to plant palms, the construction of temporary wooden structures which were to become the main set for the film. It was bad, but I think that at the time nobody realised the devastating impact that  "The Beach" would have on Maya Bay.

When I moved from Shanghai to Krabi, in 2019, the beach had already been closed for a year and for good reasons: after almost 20 years of over tourism, it had nothing of the placid atmosphere I remembered from the Nineties.
Despite belonging to Krabi's Hat Noppharat Thara- Mu Ko Phi Phi National Park, it was a nightmare: countless speed boats and long tail boats would dash back and forth dropping off thousands of visitors every hour, every-day.
80 per cent of its coral reefs had been damaged by gasoline and sunscreen or by hordes of tourists stepping on them. The noise and the pollution were deadly to the local fauna. 
​
In 2018, park officials finally stepped in and closed the bay, putting a halt to the flora and fauna carnage: a team of marine biologists and rangers began to work on restoring what was left of the reef and the fish and to plant more than 10,000 new corals.

​Here's my latest video of the reopening of Maya:

Almost four years later, on January 1st, 2022, with an unexpected decision, the National Park department officially opened Maya Bay again, reassuring all those concerned that a set of regulations would be put in place and police would make sure to protect the partially  regenerated environment of the bay. 
Regulations include keeping the number of visitors down to 300 people at any moment; banning boats and ferries from entering the bay and people from swimming from the beach.

​On January 3, I was invited to join a day trip to Phi Phi Islands by one of the speed-boat companies that operate from Krabi. Group tours and crammed speed-boats are not my favorite way of travelling, I prefer slower, bigger boats or a private long tail, however I was eager to see how the tour would be run to include the visit to Maya Bay, and so I joined it. 

The departure and first part of the itinerary was one I already knew pretty well: check in at Nopparat Thara pier next to Ao Nang at around 8 AM, a quick stop in Railay peninsula to embark more passengers, then straight to Bamboo Island, belonging to the Phi Phi archipelago, for a swim and beach time. Bamboo boasts an incredible scenery: a soft white sand beach runs all around the island, the crystal waters are ideal for snorkelling or soaking in mild currents, and often there is a delightful breeze to ease the heat.
In the past, Bamboo Island was another piece of cake very close to be devoured by greedy visitors, but the subsiding in the number of international tourists due to the pandemic bought it some time to rest and heal.
After spending about 90 minutes in Bamboo, our 35-seat speed boat headed straight to Phi Phi Leh, since the slot we were allocated to enter Maya Bay was between 11 AM and 12 PM (yes, now the entrance time is fixed, tour companies can't show up in Maya Bay outside the allocated time).

Since the re-opening, the only entrance point for the beach is at the back of the island: a new floating pier was built in Loh Sama Bay, previously a quiet corner of Phi Phi Leh with pretty good snorkelling. As soon as we approached Loh Sama Bay, I was dumbstruck: the boardwalk looked like madness, a trafficked parking lot where long-tail and speed boats were taking turns to drop off and collect tourists  in a frantic, noisy scenario.
Groups were queuing on the narrow floating pier towards Maya Bay, bumping into others on their way to leave the island.  I started to get sad and upset, and I wasn't the only one:  the other passengers looked worried and unhappy too. My colleague Pluto said: "It looks like Tien An Men Square at rush hour". One of our friends, who had never visited Maya Bay before, was so shocked by the crowd that he considered not to get off the boat at all.
How was all this to be beneficial to the environment or to the visitors who had been dreaming of a tropical paradise? I thought: we all loose here, this is not the way to sustainable tourism.

Finally our boat approached the pier (a floating platform connected to a concrete walkway) and we disembarked. Walking in a line, we followed the path that cutting across Phi Phi Leh heads to the opposite side of the island, where Maya Bay is. It's a 5 minute walk past the rangers' houses, the toilets and a few smoking areas. 

The first glimpse of the beach stole my breath. The incredible shades of blue and turquoise waters blend with the green of the surrounding karst peaks, the bluest blue of a sunny day sky and the sugary white of the beach in a picture that is too stereotypical to be real. Not for the first time, I witnessed the unparalleled breath-taking view of the bay wandering if it was true. There's nothing more beautiful than this, I thought.

But then, of course, reality came into the picture: I became aware again of the 200 people around me, taking photos, chirping with excitement, walking around in awe, sunbathing, drinking, plunging their feet in the water.
To protect the marine environment of Maya Bay,  entering the water is now prohibited, and while the decision is one that makes sense if we want to give Maya Bay a chance to continue healing, the temptation to dive in for a minute is hard to resist.

​Therefore, it was just a matter of seconds before the first person stepped a little too deep in the sea while a few others tried to have a quick swim, and the rangers on duty whistled repeatedly to call them out of the water. Far from my idea of a tropical retreat, it felt more like a kids' summer camp. 

My thoughts on the reopening of the beach, then: I still get the goosebumps from seeing Maya Bay, and I'm still convinced it is one of the most spectacular beaches in the world, but the downsides of the reopening far outweigh the benefits.

Sure, visitors are not allowed to mess with the marine life, given the prohibition to swim, but they still produce and leave garbage behind, they still walk in the water wearing sunscreen, not to mention what is happening to Loh Sama Bay.
300 people per hour, for 6-7 hours a day, everyday, is more than Phi Phi Leh can take, and while the situation is still somehow manageable with the number of foreign travellers being limited due to the pandemic, I believe that it won't be easily managed once mass tourism come back.

I really hope to be wrong, and I'd like to hear the opinion of ecologists who worked so hard to restore the environment in the last 4 years, but for now my reaction to Maya Bay opening is a troubled and pained "No, thanks". 

Have you ever been to Maya Bay yourself?
​Do you think that the beach should stay open to travellers?