I also wanted to get a sense of the beach itself: to find out if there existed an untouched feel to the place, or if both the novel and the movie were projecting onto the island a character it did not naturally possess. Overnight stays on the beach are not allowed, but I'd traveled far enough to believe that I needed to have at least one evening on the island, absent all souls.

Along the beach, local fishermen had spread woven nets and monofilament line and were knotting and smoothing and coiling to prepare for the evening's work. Maybe I could hire a fisherman to drop me on the beach and then pay him enough not to return until the next day. I knew money had tightened in the weeks since the film production left. The flush crowds everyone expected to descend on the two islands wouldn't arrive until after the release of The Beach, at least. Until then it was mostly a fishing life again for the locals, a hard life, and one that they were apparently eager to leave.

In the early stages of the protests against Fox, environmental activists argued that the filming should be forbidden because it would disrupt the economy of the local workers. But when protesters staged a sit-in on Maya Beach during pre-production, they were booted off Phi Phi Lay not by Thai police or Fox security, but by furious locals from Phi Phi Don. "It was a very exciting day," Andrew Macdonald, the film's producer, recalled with enthusiasm in an interview with Time. "These ten wimpy greens from Bangkok facing off against 60 to 100 angry locals." For most of the remaining weeks of filming, the fishermen—now on the Fox payroll—formed a floating blockade of longboats across the mouth of Maya Bay, keeping protesters and paparazzi away.

On Phi Phi Don, the issues of the mainland and foreign activists gained no traction. Everyone knew Maya Beach wasn't unspoiled; foreign travelers had been going there for years. Trash could be found on the beach, and the coral in the bay was dying or dead from the props of fishing boats. In fact the efforts of the production actually seemed to benefit Phi Phi Lay, an opinion set forth by, among others, a committee of environmental experts appointed by the Thai Forestry Department who visited the set and deemed the island in fine condition. The environmental watchdog group EcoLert also gave a positive report, as did the independent organization Reef Watch, which noted that the coral in Maya Bay actually appeared healthier than it had prior to the filming.

Far down the line of brightly painted longboats I saw a fisherman who owned just one net, which he had draped on a tepee of bamboo stalks to dry in the sun. It took only a moment to reach an agreement. A few minutes later we were moving across the channel to Phi Phi Lay, the water going from pale blue to emerald with increasing depth. Hugging the island, the boatman stayed close to the limestone walls that overhung the sea. At the base they had been cut by years of sea action, and as we neared the gap into Maya Bay he steered the noisy craft beneath the roof of stone and smiled at the hollow echo.

I was the only one. I walked up and down the sand, and when the sand ran out I walked into the bay, running my hand along the craggy boulders that ended the beach. The rocks continued for a while and then gave way to sand again. I waded around them and back onto land, and then turned away from the water and toward the island itself.

Rising through the forest was a faint trail, a curving line of pale green between the dense green of the trees. I followed it up, careful with my footing on the steep slope, stopping only to clear cobwebs from my eyes. The heaviness of the jungle hung in the air, as fecund as a hothouse. I was on the cliffs that cupped the bay like a giant's hand.

As the trail ascended it leveled out, gradually becoming no more challenging than a flight of stairs. I pushed at the branches that clogged my path. Air ferns spilled like unkempt hair across the branches and large black beetles clung to the strands, swinging in the breeze. Near the top the trees cleared out, and suddenly I was standing on a knob of rock high above the bay.

Over the wall of cliffs I could watch the Andaman Sea and the lumps of trawlers backlit on the horizon, but there was nothing on the water within several hours of me. Behind my head the jungle moved with birds and insects and things I could not see. The moon was already in the sky, though the sun had a few hours left to go.

I found the trail that returned to the bay, emerging at a spot far down the grinning curve of the beach. The tide had lifted all the footprints from the sand, including most of mine. What few remained had been discovered by crabs, which hurried from one depression to the next and then hunkered down until their eyes were level with the sand. I watched them until the sky grew orange and the bats came out, and I watched the bats feed until Maya Bay filled with moonlight.

I had brought a bag with fruit and bread and several Thai beers, and I put my dinner together before it grew too dark. I had brought a small candle lantern with me as well, but I wasn't sure I wanted to use it. I certainly wasn't going to build a fire and signal to the evening patrol that I was on the beach.

After some time I lay back on the sand and listened to the island. The waves were almost inaudible, a gentle metronomic swish in the middle distance. Green crabs made their own noise, a rapid clicking as they scrambled on the rocks and, in the near silence beneath this sound, a ticking that might have come from the contact of their claws against their hard shells as they settled into a crouch. The island's birds had mostly quieted for the night, and if there were other things on the beach or even nearby, they were moving toward sleep as well. I did hear something large crashing in the inland trees, but the sound came and left too quickly to place. I stayed on my back in the still-warm sand, following the river of stars above.

In the morning when I woke there were footprints on the beach, but no sign that a boat had landed. I never saw the person.