Beach DiCaprio Made Famous Reopens Years Later

Thailand's Maya Bay features in the 1998 film 'The Beach'
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted May 31, 2018 12:12 PM CDT
Updated Nov 17, 2021 2:13 PM CST
Tourism Forces Closure of Beach Dicaprio Made Famous
A stock photo of Maya Bay.   (Getty Images)

Update: Nearly three years after the public was barred from the idyllic beach that featured in the Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Beach, tourists will once again be welcomed back. The closure of Thailand's Maya Bay was supposed to last just four months but was extended to achieve a rehabilitation of its natural resources, which has apparently happened. NBC News reports tourists won't be able to run around willy-nilly however: Visits will be restricted to the 10am-to-4pm period, with only 300 people permitted per one-hour time slot. Our original story from May 2018 follows:

Summer visitors to Thailand hoping to retrace Leonardo DiCaprio's steps as seen in the movie The Beach are out of luck. The Maya Bay beach featured in the 1998 film, part of a national park on the island of Ko Phi Phi, has been temporarily closed for the first time as part of a rejuvenation program made necessary by thousands of daily visitors, reports CNN. As a German tourist tells the BBC: "The beach in the film is very relaxing, there are no people to be seen, and you get this idea of a very lonely place in the middle of nowhere. Then you come here and you think you're in Times Square in New York."

Before reopening the beach in October, Thailand's Department of National Parks says it will assess the environmental health of the coastal area and determine whether further restrictions are required. In the meantime, summer visitors will be barred from setting foot on the beach, and even from entering the bay on boats, though they'll get the rare opportunity of seeing the beach empty from the cliffs that form the blue-green bay's opening, notes CNN. (More Thailand stories.)

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