Will The White Lotus turn Thailand into a paradise lost?

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Julie Anne Pattee is a Canadian writer based in Thailand.

Once a month, more than 20,000 revelers descend on the island of Ko Pha-Ngan, where I live, for what’s called the Full Moon Party, one of the biggest beach parties in Asia, known for flaming rope jumping, lethal cocktail buckets, and neon body paint. When they straggle off a few days later, this place becomes a kind of paradise again.

Saxon, the frat-boy character played by Patrick Schwarzenegger on the popular HBO series The White Lotus, described our notoriously debaucherous fete as “lasers and shitty music,” after the characters land on my island in this season’s fifth episode. These days, it feels more like an electrified, futuristic version of the Pleasure Island that Pinocchio visits in the classic Disney movie, with all the glowing bunny ears and animal tails the ravers are wearing. Life is fun and magical for foreigners here, as the TV series masking as an ad for tourism to Thailand suggests – and it is also different.

Ever since I was little, I’d dreamed of going to Asia one day. The idea had been embedded in me, maybe as much as the idea of “happily ever after.” And then just after COVID, my landlord put my Montreal duplex up for sale. It felt like my life was turning into a series of events I had no control over, so I decided to put my stuff in storage and escape it for a bit. A friend suggested Thailand.

The country, like many of its neighbours in Southeast Asia, has been adjusting to the rise of remote work by offering more long-term stay options for visitors. While retirees have always been able to purchase visas, and various options existed for foreign workers and students, last year the Thai government launched a new digital-nomad visa, which allows remote workers employed by foreign companies, with enough money in the bank, to stay in Thailand for up to five years.

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When I arrived in Ao Nang, a resort town in Thailand’s south, and saw the pink limestone cliffs, the palm trees and the ragged ocean, it felt like I was stepping back in time. A geologist told me that this was the part of the world where, billions of years ago, the land first rose from the sea. I stumbled around in a daze, drinking in the new sights and sounds, until I found this island, and my luck changed.

I got a job teaching English, though my students are mostly Russian, Ukrainian and Israeli; the maintenance staff at my school are refugees from the conflict in Myanmar. Recent wars have greatly increased the number of ex-pats interested in living here, despite the obstacles. Work permits are hard to come by and many jobs, such as hairdressing and even singing, are reserved for Thais.

After The White Lotus was filmed in the area last year, there was some buzz about it, but it’s just not the talk of town, the way it would be if a major Hollywood production came to a North American city. My boss says Thais aren’t into messy, emotional dramas and prefer comedies. Same goes for the many of the foreigners who live here, who’ve come to heal from traumas, like the characters in the show. (As Timothy Ratliff, the character played by Jason Issacs in The White Lotus, notes, foreigners who come to Thailand are often either “looking for something or hiding from something.”) The well-documented “White Lotus effect” has been hard to ignore, though. Locals say this high season has been the busiest in ages. The crowds show little sign of slowing down as we approach April 6, when the show’s finale will air, and we head into the traditional low season.

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Still, even if the crowds eventually recede, there’s a sense this place has been changed forever. When an unusual summer storm hit the area outside monsoon season a few weeks ago, and parts of Ko Pha-Ngan was flooded, local residents on community Facebook pages blamed the recent construction boom. The lush mountain sides here are being carved into and paved with cement to make way for luxury resorts and villas, which will house the increase in visitors expected to the country as a direct result of the HBO series. The Thai government recently praised The White Lotus and its team for increasing tourism to the region, and after COVID devastated local economies, the revitalization is much needed.

Many are already calling our island paradise lost. But Thailand is seemingly always going through this process of being “discovered.” A tension exists between wanting to share its glorious beaches and incredible culture with the idea that it’s a secret that must be kept from the rest of the world. The same handwringing and consternation happened after the publication of Alex Garland’s novel, The Beach, in 1996, and the Leonardo DiCaprio movie that soon followed; as many as 8,000 tourists a day flocked to Maya Bay, in southern Thailand, damaging sensitive coral reefs, which led the government to close the area for restoration. When it reopened, several years ago, strict rules were put in place to limit the number of tourists.

Although I’m not on a deserted island – the setting where a character most often lands when they need to reckon with themselves – loneliness has still been a challenge. It’s been hard to connect with Thais across the barriers of language. But the kindnesses ingrained in the Buddhist culture have been a source of comfort. My boss brought me back a souvenir from her travels recently: a small cherrywood mirror, inlaid with shimmering white stones. Sometimes, memories from my old life flash through my mind like a stream, and I see my bookshelves, my kitchen table, my teacups. Of course, I know it’s not really about the things. It’s that they held memories of the people I miss back in my old frozen city, the few precious treasures I had. Sometimes I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland, like I fell through a hole and landed here on the other side of the world so I could grow up.