Ethics of the Island

Our kids partied hearty under the Ko Chang moon. Siam Huts, the bungalows, restaurant and bar at the south corner of the sandy section of Lonely Beach setup a dance area in the sand with live DJ. Music begins at 6pm  and nightly fire twirling show at 9:30. Emily, Arielle and I took the kids for sunset at the beach followed by dinner – and hopefully fire twirling (we didn't know how late the show actually was). 

To anyone acquainted with a Thai island, fire twirling is old hat. Practically every beach on ever island with backpacker-type lodging has fire twirling shows. I saw it first at one beach on Ko Samet in 2001 and by the time Emily and I were on the same island in 2011, there was fire being twirled on every habitable beach of the island. And as entertaining as it always is, it raised questions even then – specifically about having the main attraction be an eight year-old boy shaking his thing and spinning fire (very well).

Our kids, however, were not forced to dance, but did so willingly and happily as they got down to the music and Sennen interspersed making sand angels and drumming with chopsticks in between bouts of dance. They danced just the two of them, they danced with Emily and Arielle and then they danced with a possibly high dude from Korea. Sennen and Ailyn partied until Ailyn was falling asleep in my arms. These kids had the spirit of Thai island backpacker life in them all along – we just didn't know it.

Emily and I didn't see our partiers most of the day as we took some adult time at Lonely Beach, while the kids stayed with Arielle and enjoyed the swimming pool overlooking the small beach at our complex.

Relaxing in deck chairs on the gorgeous white sand beach, taking dips in the warm shallow water with silty sea floor, getting beachside massages and enjoying food and drink from our chairs gave us the dose of R&R we needed. Although Lonely Beach was new to both of us, it was extremely familiar – a photocopy of Thai island beaches we had both been to before – including those at Ko Samet.

And like with Samet in 2011, Thai island life has its joys, but for anyone pausing to think – its ethical quandaries too. Besides the aforementioned issue of children spinning fire for money – and the almost obvious concern about ongoing development of a beautiful, natural place – there are some subtler bits of food for thought.

In 2011, two of those things on my mind were plastic bottles and prostitution – which litter most every Thai island, but the latter of which is a little more common on Ko Chang and Ko Samet given their closer proximity to Bangkok. To be clear, these islands are not places where prostitution is widely solicited, but where foreign men bring their Thai "girlfriends" for weekends and trips. Sometimes these are arrangements in which a Thai woman is paid, sometimes she's being compensated in-kind by her "sugar daddy." And then there are legitimate Thai-foreigner relationships which get marred and misjudged because of how common the more elicit ones are.

Nothing much has changed on either of these issues. The sheer volume of plastic bottles on the beach was astounding as they mounted through the day without trash cans regularly accessible. At one point, Emily and I had at least four emptied water bottles and as many plastic cups piled up by our beach chairs. We didn't need the drinks to be served in plastic cups – in fact, I always remember getting them in glass before – and there's no access to filtered water that isn't bottled. So, there it is…

But today I found myself thinking beyond the plastic. When I first visited Ko Chang in 2002, it felt relatively remote and sparsely developed. It was a large, beautiful island that was still a backpacker's paradise. That's really how all of the Thai islands began – first natural paradises with a few fishing villages and trading posts. In the 1970s, they began to catch on with backpackers looking for adventure and beauty on a shoestring budget – an era and people who founded things like Lonely Planet guidebooks, of which Thailand was one of their first and remains – in my opinion – one of their best. 

But once the information was out there that such places not only existed, but were affordable, it was only a matter of time before increasing numbers of people would seek them out. And Thais didn't take long to come to the conclusion that if a little of something is good for their wallets, then a lot of it must be even better. That included expanding offerings to accommodate and attract people with larger budgets. 

So the buildings, roads and even airports went up.

But hotels, bungalow establishments, restaurants, boats and taxis don't run themselves. The islands require a workforce to make the magic happen – and that brought Thais from all around Thailand, but especially from the poorer Northeastern Issan provinces where jobs were scarce. So now we have a much larger permanent population.

Then there's the matter of sanitation and utilities. Most of the Thai islands have no sewer systems and many don't have clean water distribution. That led to an abundance of cess pools and septic tanks as well as boats and trucks to deliver clean water to tanks behind lodging establishents. There's also the issue of electricity. Some islands are served by power grids, but others like Ko Samet still rely on generator power to make everything work. That's why so many people wake up in the morning in a sweat – their fans and air conditioners no longer working after their bungalow establishments cut the generators in the wee hours of the night.

In short, the vacations we all enjoy so much have their distinct costs to the very places we love. Perhaps it's now having more than 15 years of Thailand trips to look back on perhaps it's the perspective change and development that comes with reaching 40 – but I find myself thinking about the Ko Chang I first laid eyes on and the one I see today with some interspersed pangs of guilt and regret. Not enough to keep me from getting that massage or ordering that coconut smoothy – but enough to wonder if there's a way to advocate for more sustainable practices and to know that my glass can't be completely full.