A Beach Nobody Can Touch | Hacker News Reader

A Beach Nobody Can Touch

bbc.co.uk

137 pointsrmason91 comments

There should be a two-pronged effort to tackle over-tourism.

1. For ultra-popular attractions (Venice, Maya Bay...), keep jacking up the prices until the tourist flow trickles down to what can be sustained at those places. In case that sounds elitist, have supplemental measures like first-come first-served permits (like the ones at Half Dome, Yosemite) or procedural barriers which only the most committed ones would jump through.

2. Popularize hitherto unknown destinations. I am sure there are tons of gems in "the middle of nowhere". Spread the tourism everywhere around the globe, which will be appreciated by regions looking for economic boosts. Maybe, there are even known techniques like opening up non-stop flights from hotspot tourist sources (Beijing? Shanghai? Delhi?) or filming popular movies at such locations (like The Beach from TFA).

Please do not do #2.

Rather, unknown destinations need to remain unknown. (by this, I mean secret trails, waterfalls, beaches, etc). I think locals should take steps to protect them, including removing trail markers and trash, and refusing to talk about them. Erase trip reports from the internet, and actively fight to keep them secret and protected. Problem is, any possible "cool thing" is economically exploitable--and the economy absolutely will exploit it in the end.

For #1, you realize that the same problem applies right? Economic incentives are all completely against this.

> Problem is, any possible "cool thing" is economically exploitable--and the economy absolutely will exploit it in the end.

"Economic exploitation" and "people enjoying the place" are the same thing. A beach with one person rather than 300 is great if you're that one person, but it sucks for the other 299.

> For #1, you realize that the same problem applies right? Economic incentives are all completely against this.

Not convinced. People are willing to pay a premium for a site in good condition, with enough space to explore, and exclusivity is a bonus in some circles. If you jack the price up by a factor of 10 (which may sound ridiculous, but look at the price of Everest climbing permits) and only 1/5th as many people come, that's a profit for you and fewer people coming.

For #2, you realize that the same problem applies, right?

Locals in poor areas will always prefer a few years of selling out to tourists to long term sustainability: kids need education now, you want to rainproof your house now or in essence: you want to better your life now.

For them, there is not a single incentive to follow your advice.

I agree, there are more than enough people to just make the less well known places overcrowded.

Security through obscurity, feels like it has been tried before...

In this very case that might be enough to delay damage a bit

I've joked to people more than once that it is fortunate that Scotland has such awful weather - we have some utterly gorgeous beaches but the opportunity to visit them when the weather is actually nice and warm (which does happen occasionally) is an an experience to be treasured.

As someone who visits Scotland more often than would be reasonable, I can only agree. Beaches there are gorgeous, and you can't see any tourist around, even on sunny days, as there are not so many. Such a great country.

Norfolk is often similar, some insanely beautiful beaches but very few tourists there.

Port Ban on Iona is my favourite - a small pure white shell beach near the wonderfully named "Bay at the back of the Ocean" on a tiny remote island that is both stunningly pretty and absolutely loaded with history ("its cargo of mouldering kings").

But even then you still need a dry suit to swim in the water!

I have some very good memories from Broughty ferry beach back when I was at university.

... and midges.

Wear a midge jacket and a dry suit and you are good to go!

http://www.midgejacket.co.uk/

;-)

NB I seem to me relatively immune to midges, but I do seem to be popular with clegs and ticks :-(

The Yosemite system is a lottery now. It was first-come-first-serve but tour companies (read: scalpers) would buy them all up. There were a couple of years where it was incredibly difficult to get a permit. The lottery system is pretty great and we've been able to consistently get Half Dome permits (yearly trip) since.

Really? How long ago was this implemented? Last time I was at Yosemite I just bought a pass on the way in and drove all the way in to see things. Is this not the case anymore?

The parent commenter is referring to the Half Dome permitting system. There's no limit on people entering the park daily (which is why it's so incredibly crowded). They do cap the number of people allowed to ascend Half Dome each day.

There's a lottery system, then a small number of tickets are given out on a first come first serve basis from the ranger stations on the day of.

Instead of jacking up the prices, you can also just not make it easy to reach.

That won't work for venice, but for beaches you could just make sure the only way to reach them is a 5km foot path, and don't allow guided tours.

I'm pretty sure that would make visitor numbers drop to sustainable levels automatically, and people who really want to can still go.

Here in the alps we also have lots of tourism, but as soon as you are an hour walk away from a parking lot, the masses are gone.

Is this beach easy to reach? You mention beaches, but wouldn't that just be a matter of taking a boat?

Yes, you'd need to stop boats (like they do for this beach).

What I'm trying to say: Don't forbid visiting the beach; just make sure it's a bit inconvenient.

Venice is actually perfect for making it hard to reach. Give inhabitants of the island a special permit that allows them to use the only bridge freely. Everyone else has to obtain the permit (which is a highly bureaucratic procedure) or literally swim there (boats also have to obtain the permit to use the piers).

Which is, essentially, the scheme being currently implemented. Expecting jet-ski chases of illegally entering tourists - the city was built by sea merchants, water is still the main mode of transport, with streets secondary.

Not at all sure about 2.

I'm sure there are indeed tons of gems in the middle of nowhere. A few will find them by themselves, and they'll stay gems. Anywhere and everywhere that gets popularised gets ruined, or well on the way to it. The very reason to go is eroded out of existence.

A few will popularise naturally, which is probably the only sustainable way to go.

I recall an article that discussed the impact Instagram and the like were having on previously little-known, lightly trafficked sites. People post selfies and geotag themselves, sites get more popular, more trafficked, risk of damage goes up, etc.

Hadn;t realised it was having that extensive an impact beyond the few that go viral. Has implications that maintaining some wilderness and limiting the damage is going to become challenging, if it's that widespread.

Yeah, there is an irony, posting about some "secret hidden location" on FB or Instagram.

Quite. If I found somewhere pristine and gorgeous, I'd keep damn quiet, in the hope it was still that hidden gem if I went back.

It does sound elitist, why not allocate by random ballot? I don't see an obvious benefit allocating access to areas of natural beauty to the rich. I suppose they may bring more money to an area.

Number 2 is a lot more possible now than just a decade ago due to the rise of smaller, more efficient aircraft (A350, 787) over jumbos and the popularity of point-to-point (rather than hub and spoke) airline networks. This decreases the cost of establishing a new route and popularising a new destination - Europe is leading the way here.

Croatia, Georgia, Estonia and others have all been opened up substantially by cheaper airfares.

There is an island in Malaysia I like to visit. It’s definitely not easy to get to. You’ll have to take a coach bus with the locals, then hop in a taxi, then take a ferry boat with the locals.

Also, there is no power at night (generator and solar powered) the reactions I get are telling; European friends are really keen, American friends are aghast at the lack of air conditioning. Like how will they charge up their electronics.

Tackling over-tourism is very similar to Brexit: you want to stop those ugly, stinking foreigners from coming and soiling your place. If only they just kept sending you the money...

Only if you treat "tourist/local" as binary (and in your specific case, also conflating "foreigner+tourist"); the problem exists mostly at the extreme end of the continuum - "check it off the bucket list, immediately move on." Wrote a few more words on this earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17875576

Am currently living in the European Stag Party Capital :-/ Unlike Venice, it is landlocked, and also a normal city. 1. wouldn't work, unless you can strictly and correctly separate people into tourist/local bins. This might be possible for Venice, as it has natural barriers. Not here - the only way this would work is to kill the old city and make it into a disneyified taxidermist exhibit of itself (which is also happening, "naturally"). 2. is perhaps the only way out, but it takes time.

There are oddly strong parallels here to the H-1B visa debates: raise the price and/or broaden the geography.

I can't believe they don't charge to enter Venice. 10 EUR minimum would be a start

I feel like you only need to do the first of these, and the second will happen naturally.

> Some of them told us they had come to Thailand just to visit Maya Bay and did not realise it was closed.

There are 100 reasons to visit Thailand, and this is a shitty one. It's a nice beach, but there's plenty of nicer ones not even that far away from it

I'm on the neighbouring island, Koh Lanta and there is a genuine, positive local push for better ecological policies. The country reached a tipping point with the Maya Bay incident and there's a realisation now that the country will head to financial disaster if they don't keep their prized assets safe.

My mother stopped by Maya bay yesterday on her boat, and had this to say:

——

I was there yesterday, and was devastated to see that the new rules re beach/boat access are being broken. Several longtails/speedboats had tied to the buoyed demarcation line... which has been moved closer to the beach btw, and were inside the exclusion zone. Also, tour boats that were on mooring balls were belching filthy diesel exhaust fumes, leaving an oily film floating on the water. Add to that the plastic debris floating around, and it’s as disappointing as it has been for the 8 years I’ve known it. 2 boats actually landed on the beach, with the passengers walking around on the sand/in the water. Where were the rangers? Their boat was there, but not a ranger to be seen. They’re usually very quick to appear, to ask for the National Park payment. I’m happy to pay, although I have questioned before why the rubbish is in overflowing sacks on the small adjoining beach on Maya Bay. I think this is just a PR stunt, not a real effort. Come on Phuket/Krabi, you could do so much better.

——

So, the ground truth seems to be that this is little more than a PR effort. For my part, I’ve seen the rangers just burning and/or just heaping up trash a few meters inland from the beach on multiple “pristine” islands.

Also currently on Lanta. Lanta feels like a special case compared to the rest of the country, and it's interesting to speculate how it got that way. There's still an upsetting amount of trash on the island, but I've not seen organized grassroots trash pickups or free water fillups anywhere else in the country

I spent a week there about 10 years ago. Loved my time on that island.

All people want to do is go there to take selfies because there isn't enough beach or time to relax and enjoy... so, why can't we make non-natural things more interesting, and make nature super uncool so that people avoid it? a man can dream.

I'm glad they were able to nurse the coral back in a decade, but it just seems cynical to invest so much into 300 feet of beach and the comodifiy it. But if that is the only way to preserve it... It's like the hunter paradox: they claim hunting funds conservation. Or like the clearing the forest to keep it from burning paradox. Which forest rangers support. Maybe this is what sustainability looks like: having to just clean up after shitty humans day in, day out.

Did anyone else find the UI scroll reveals incredibly annoying?

> Did anyone else find the UI scroll reveals incredibly annoying?

I actually thought the article ended when I hit one of those full page reveal things. Terrible way to present information.

> Did anyone else find the UI scroll reveals incredibly annoying?

Yeah, it disrupted the flow so reduced my comprehension and retention of the article. A shame: someone went to a lot of work, but made the article worse.

>value instanceof LokationsRessourceGruppe

I actually liked the implementation in this case. Felt a bit more interactive.

Same here. I think most of it is that I've gotten somewhat used to the weird reveals and stuff- it's more of a tool than anything to me now, and this one was well done, as was the Reuters article [0] that introduced me to it.

[0]https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spyi...

I was in Thailand last November and I spent some days in Krabi. It's so overly touristic that in most "paradisiac" beaches you cannot even take a decent nap with all the noisy long-tail boats going back and forth. Even though I contributed for the overexploration, I wasn't ready for this. I wouldn't be surprised if they start restricting access to other places like Railay.

How was Ao Nang? Is it bearable? (last time I went was 5 years ago).

I stayed a few nights in Ao Nang and even though is quite packed you can still find places to eat without reserving beforehand. I used it more as a base to visit the surroundings, as the beach there doesn't look that inviting with all the boats and the occasional sewer. I was expecting it to be more "Thai", instead as I walked down the street I heard the same radio hits I hear in Europe. But that's just my expectations hitting the globalization wall. On a positive note I really liked northern Thailand, the days I spent in Chiang Mai were definitely the best days of the trip.

I was shocked when I got a Thai massage there some years back and the woman asked me where I was from. 'Germany.' 'And you speak ENGLISH?!?!' That was very telling about the kind of people they usually get I think.

Those sharks look like the perfect deterrence against anyone who tries to sneak inside by swimming underneath the demarcation line. Good job, nature! :)

Sadly (in this case) blacktip reef sharks are "Timid and skittish, the blacktip reef shark is difficult to approach and seldom poses a danger to humans unless roused by food."[1]. Happily that means you can swim near them safely, they hang out in Ao Leuk (I think?) on Koh Tao as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacktip_reef_shark

There's a huge irony in seeing a Hollywood movie about a deserted, tourist free beach. Then booking a package holiday to it, expecting the same, and dropping your crap on the beach anyway. Still, everywhere will be the same soon at this rate. Ruined.

I'm glad I experienced a few locations before they became commercialised and before I stopped flying.

Honestly it's completely understandable to be upset at large numbers of tourists (particularly if they do things like drop litter) but I can't help feeling this comment is lacking a little bit of self awareness

Not sure I see what you're getting at. I'm old enough that many places that are now heaving major destinations, with extensive damage, weren't terribly commercialised or even especially popular.

If I wanted an isolated, pristine beach I wouldn't pick one made globally famous. I'd actively avoid it.

Art imitates life I guess (or the other way around).

I always thought the book had its own set of ironies, in that this perfect beach existed, and it was the people that brought their troubles and fucked it up, regardless of how ideologically superior they thought they were.

I went all around there in 2005 and it was incredible. Especially the Krabi region and the nearby island (Koh Poda).

I resisted Krabi again 10 years later and was horrified. There was a McDonalds and Starbucks etc. Koh Poda was full of boats, dirty water and worst of all a literal rubbish dump of plastic further into the island. The Thais do not take care of the wonderful land they have.

The Thais or the masses of careless tourists?

I have never been there, but in my general experience, locals set the expectation for what happens with trash and nature. If there is no local interest in preserving nature, tourists won't take care of it either.

That web page hijacking the scrollbar is clever but frustrating.

When I was there (2008) we could still visit (we didn't) the locals told us that it was a complete mess before but the tsunami actually cleaned the whole bay. In 2008 it was supposedly quite clean and nice there.

Hearing about the litter makes me aggressive, you go there to enjoy the beauty of nature and then you decide to make it a bit uglier and poison the environment?

Anger is just a stage. Carry some small trash bags and pick up a little. Hand some bags out. If you see someone litter, go pick it up yourself and then look them right in their face and smile, say nothing and move on.

I've found that people are reluctant to litter on a clean beach yet unthinkingly do it if the beach is already visibly trashy. So the strategy is to get a beach clean enough where it is obviously not OK to trash it. People will get it.

Having visited just the year before they closed it - I felt like the beach itself was pretty clean. The woods right at the beach line though had some tourist trash. Apparently the worry is the coral is mostly dead and it will imbalance the rest of the ecology. It was beautiful when I visited and definitely far from being “trashed”. I don’t know a lot about ecological conservation, so maybe there’s lots of signs I didn’t notice!

Coral everywhere is dead or dying, I have not visited a site in the past ten years that does not have an alarming amount of that going. Something I never, ever would have believed as a youth really is going to happen, coral will be gone in our lifetimes :-|

It's likely all coral reefs will be dead before the end of the century. Corals are very sensitive to rising ocean temperatures, and something like 50% of them have already been killed by "bleaching" events as the water warms.

Thailand tourist places are full of mafia-style price controls (in phuket atleast it was mafia, so it's still in pattaya). They should be turned off and just suck up and go to do real work. All the moneys (which is big!) coming to tourist attractions goes to few large pockets, and not giving dam about the environment, education, health-care, people and so on.

I went there in Sept 2017 and there were only a handful of people on the beach. I'm not sure how you restrict these places when you can pay a sailor $50 USD to take you to all of these places for the day. Overcrowded beaches are not a bad thing just have some sort of maintenance budget

Good article on this subject (the example is Tulum, Mexico)

https://www.thecut.com/2019/02/who-killed-tulum.html

Waiting for thisbeachdoesnotexist.com

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