The story…
Maya Bay: Saving paradise
Learn language related to…
tourism
Need-to-know language
landscape – area of land with an attractive appearance
tourists – people who visit a place for pleasure
tourist attraction – place people visit for interest or pleasure
to dock – (verb) to park a boat or ship at a dock
preservation – the protection and maintenance of something old and/or valuable
Answer this…
How long is the beach closed to tourists for?
Transcript
From the air, its beauty is breathtaking. Sheer limestone towers soaring out of an impossibly turquoise sea. A landscape so dazzling it starred in a Hollywood movie.
But the movie brought fame and popularity, so that the famous beach began to be crushed under the weight of visitors numbering thousands each day.
Thon Thamrongnawasawat, Marine Scientist
Before, we crossed [the] Maya Bay, sometimes there were more than 200 boats inside the bay, this small bay that you see. [And there is not] look like a bay, it looked like a floating market.
Tourists can still come to the mouth of Maya Bay, but the only view of the beach is a distant one.
We followed a team from the National Parks Department who’d come to see how well the marine life is recovering. Mostly we saw only dead and broken coral. This is the damage done by years of uncontrolled tourism. The new coral is embedded back in the bay floor. It will need many years to mature, but already there are visible improvements.
The sudden closure of this region’s most famous tourist attraction has not been popular with local entrepreneurs. They agree that there were too many visitors, but not with the response.
The initial closure was for four months – now it’s indefinite. There is a plan for the boats to dock on the other side of the island for tourists to walk to the beach.
In truth, no one really knows how to balance the preservation of this fragile landscape with the desire of millions to see it.
Did you get it?
How long is the beach closed to tourists for?
The initial closure was for four months but for now, it is closed indefinitely.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/lingohack/ep-190227