Garbage Monkeys

Upon arriving  at the main pier at Ko Phi Phi, visitors are immediately herded through a impromptu toll booth where the government extracts 20 baht (~70 cents USD)  per person. The justification for this is to keep Ko Phi Phi clean. Having seen otherwise beautiful beaches and tropical paradises ruined by litter in other areas of the world, we were OK with paying this fee. Nonetheless, knowing how government bureaucracies work, we were a bit skeptical as we passed our crumpled and damp bills to the uniformed official.

The moment we needed to throw something out, we realized that our incredulity was not unfounded.

There are no garbage cans on Ko Phi Phi. At least, there aren’t many. The few we saw seemed to be privately owned, put out by a hotel or resort. Most of the time, we ended up throwing our trash out in the garbage bags tied to food vendors’ booths and shacks. More than once we found ourselves walking around with a folded up paper plate. Was our 40 baht actually being put to good use?

Long beach on the southern coast was quite clean, and easily the nicest beach that is easily accessible by foot. Even low tide didn’t reveal anything more than an odd bottle or two - it wasn’t anything to write home about. The beach along Ton Sai Bay, where the main deep water pier is, is saturated with anchored up traditional longboats and more modern speedboats, giving it kind of a commercial feel, minimizing the expectation of the beach being clean. Nonetheless, this beach is surprisingly clean compared to the party beach on the north side of the isthmus.

For being the center of tourist activity on the island with its numerous beach bars, clubs, resorts and hotels, the beach of Loh Da Lum Bay was filthy. On the one hand, more people means more trash; on the other hand, it should also mean a greater motivation to keep the area clean in order to entice the very tourists that fuel the local economy. Maybe drunk gap year backpackers simply don’t give a shit if they need to swim through 10 feet of floating grocery bags, bottles, and styrofoam before being in clear swimmable water. The garbage here isn’t unbearable, and it is possible to turn a blind eye and simply choose not to see it, but it renders the water uninviting. Given the tax collected to “Keep Ko Phi Phi Clean” - what are they keeping clean?

Earlier today, we rented a double sit top kayak and set off from the aforementioned Loh Da Lum Bay and set out around the rocky outcropping to our left towards Yong Kasem Bay, also known as Monkey Beach.

We were greeted with a picturesque little bay, with a few speedboats worth of Chinese tourists, a few fellow kayakers, and the filthiest garbage-strewn beach we’ve come across thus far.

And no monkeys. At least not of the kind we were expecting to find. It seems that this beach is only visited by human monkeys - the domesticated ape (or at least it likes to think of itself as domesticated and civilized). This human monkey is the one that extracts the petroleum from the earth that it then converts to the plastics that then, for all intents and purposes, never go away, never disappear, never biodegrade. These plastics float endlessly in our oceans (like the massive island of plastic in the middle of the pacific), and sometimes wash up during high tide on beaches such as this.

Why don’t they clean the garbage up? Why don’t the speed and longboat operators that shuttle tourists here think to take back a small bag of garbage every trip? After all, if each visitor to a place picked up and brought back one piece of trash more than they brought in, litter would simply be nonexistent. This fact is obvious. Why don’t they spend some of that 20 baht that each person pays to get it done?

Laying on that beach listening to the surf, we tried to relax, but just couldn’t. Our eyes were constantly drawn to the garbage all over the place. We started estimating how long it would take for, say, 10 people, to clean this beach up. It wouldn’t take longer than a few hours, we agreed, and we started thinking about how nice it would be to organize a group of volunteers to come and do just that, in the process setting an example for future visitors.

Don’t leave for tomorrow what can be done today.

Instead of making the whole task bigger, more complicated, more daunting, ultimately leaving the task of cleaning for another day, since we were there (here and now), we decided to simply start doing. It was easy enough to find a big garbage bag among the garbage (Alanis Morisette would be proud), and we began filling it. Soon enough, others began to join - some filling bags of their own (two thumbs up!) and some adding to our bag (one thumb up!). As one of the speedboats was about to pull away, we ran up with a grocery bag of garbage, asking them to take it away, which they did. We hope they will think to do it themselves next time.

We salvaged some rope, strapped down the bag in the middle of our kayak, and after a couple hours, set off back home. A warm rain, the same temperature as the air and the water beneath us, began to fall during our paddle back. Our spirits stayed high.

The guy we rented the kayaks from was surprised to see the big garbage back that we brought back with us. He thanked us.

Hopefully, we changed some minds today.