Hat Maya

Maya Bay is the horseshoe-shaped beach on the back of Ko Phi Phi Le that became famous as the filming location for “The Beach” (2000). It closed to visitors from mid-2018 to 2022 after overcrowding wrecked the coral and sand; it has reopened since, but under a different set of rules than the pre-2018 experience most photos and blog posts still describe. Boats now land at Loh Samah Bay around the back of the island, swimming is banned, and the beach closes for two months every year to let the reef recover.

What changed after 2022 — read this before you book: The bay used to let boats beach directly on the sand and visitors swim freely offshore. Neither is true anymore. Boats moor at a floating pier in Loh Samah Bay, on the island’s east side, and passengers walk a wooden boardwalk cut through a natural gap in the limestone — about 5-10 minutes each way — to reach Maya Bay’s sand. Once there, wading is capped at knee depth; actual swimming is prohibited to protect a blacktip reef shark nursery in the shallows and coral that’s still recovering from a multi-year replanting programme. Rangers patrol the beach and enforce it.

The park also runs a visitor cap of roughly 380 people on the beach at any one time, with tour operators assigned rotating slots of about 90 minutes — landing, an hour on the sand, then re-boarding — rather than open-ended access. Early boats (the park opens at 7 AM) get the emptiest beach and the calmest light on the cliffs; by mid-morning, once day-tour convoys from Phuket, Krabi, and Phi Phi Don converge, the sand fills up and the boardwalk queue lengthens.

Even scaled back, the setting is the reason people still make the trip: sheer limestone walls close in on three sides of a tight cove, the sand is genuinely white and fine, and the water in the cove itself stays a pale turquoise even when the Andaman further out runs a deeper blue. What’s changed is the experience around it — a managed, timed visit rather than a free-roaming beach day.

Watch out: Don’t plan an Andaman trip around late July through early October without checking the closure dates first. The park shuts the beach for roughly two months each year — usually 1 August to 30 September, though the exact dates can shift — to let the shark nursery and coral recover from the dry-season crowds. Boat tours still cruise past and view the bay from the water during the closure; only the sand landing is paused.

Insider Tip: Book the first tour departure of the day if landing at Maya Bay itself matters to you. The park opens at 7 AM, and the difference between an 8 AM arrival and an 11 AM arrival is the difference between a mostly empty cove and a beach packed shoulder to shoulder with the day’s full quota.

Maya Bay sits on Ko Phi Phi Le, the uninhabited island that also holds Pileh Lagoon and Viking Cave — most day tours combine all three plus a Loh Samah snorkel stop into a single half-day circuit. Boats depart from Phi Phi Don Island, Ao Nang, Krabi Town, or Phuket, with journey times from 15 minutes (Phi Phi Don) to well over an hour (Phuket). The Ko Phi Phi hub page covers where to stay and how to get to the islands in the first place. Bring reef-safe sunscreen and drinking water — there are no facilities on the beach itself, and vendors and toilets are back at the Loh Samah mooring point, not on the sand.