So I was invited by a friend to join him in Phi Phi Island for a few days during the Christmas holiday break. In years past I would have given this invitation a hard pass because during Christmas and New Year's, places like Phi Phi have always been packed to the gills and just completely overrun with people. It is also the time of year where all businesses invoke their "peak season" rates, which means you are going to be paying double, or even triple what the room is normally worth. Some hotels would even have "compulsory gala dinners" that you have to pay for whether or not you actually attend it. Of course they were always super overpriced and featured very average buffets as well.
Well things are a little different now because it is nigh on impossible for anyone to even get into Thailand thanks to our little pal Covid.
However, if you are one of the fortunate few that live here and were able to be in the country before they locked the doors and threw away the keys, this island is almost completely uninhabited by anyone. Tourism is almost completely dead and while I can celebrate this small victory on behalf of the sea life that was taking a big hit by over tourism, I can't help but feel pretty bad for the loss of income that no doubt has hit many families very hard.
Now I want to be very clar about what is going on in these abandoned "streets" of Phi Phi: They were dumpy, tacky, and basically just kind of gross back when they were in operation. However, this was the backpackers part of the island if you can imagine such a thing existing. Dorm operations, the usual overpriced pad Thai shops, the ripoff travel agencies and ATM machines with massive withdrawal fees were all over the place and of course a pharmacy that charges double what paracetamol costs on the mainland was a mainstay.
Virtually every single one of these shops are closed now and while I have no solid evidence of this, it appears as though this is permanent because when you look in the windows everything is covered in dust and most of the buildings were devoid of any sort of furnishing that suggests the people running the shops gave up quite some time ago and likely didn't enjoy the idea of paying extremely high rent for a shop that is not going to get any customers in the near to perhaps distant future.
Most of these buildings looked pretty bad even when the island was heaving with tourists, but now that basically all the businesses have jumped ship and run away, the disarray is even worse. Prior to Covid, these ramshackle buildings were adorned with lights or decorum of some sort that made it presentable, but they were never nice. Now that they are completely abandoned, a lot of them are imply falling apart.
Now I have a mixed bag of feelings as far as this is concerned. On one side I obviously feel terrible for the people that may have poured their heart and savings into these businesses but on the other hand they were terrible eyesores and the very rich families that own all of the land were charging extortionate prices for the rent. If anything good can come out of this maybe the owners of the land will be a bit more selective about what they allow on their land and perhaps, once things start to return to "normal" they will be a bit more kind and reasonable about what they charge for the various plots of land.
I for one would like to see SOME LEVEL of zoning as in the past things were just built wherever people felt like it and this simply resulted in there being entirely too many businesses and all of them sold essentially the same garbage.
On a purely selfish note, the lack of tourism resulted in a win for me and my friend as our rather luxurious hotel had a price of less than $20 and if this were a regular season you could count on the price tag of this exact same room being 10 times that much during this time of year. Getting our own boat to tour the local snorkeling sites was 1/4 the cost that it was the last time I was here as well.
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$20 for a deluxe swimming pool suite... not too shabby
I didn't bother to negotiate with anyone because I already know what it used to cost and everyone is struggling to make any money at all. However, it was a real eye opener to see that the boat tours were 25% the previous cost and it just makes me wonder how deep the corruption is on this island since at our far diminished price I presume the boat captain is still making money or he wouldn't do it.
It remains to be seen what will happen to Phi-Phi after Covid is in our rear view mirrors but while I am hopeful they will make changes for the better including some sort of policy towards environmental preservation I wouldn't count on it. I have been here long enough to realize that money drives everything, even if making that money means destroying the very nature that the people are flocking to the location for in the first place.
For now, if you have the good fortune of being in Thailand already during these trying times I highly suggest that you make your way down to Phi-Phi Island. It is very unlikely it will ever be this "untouched" ever again.