Backpackers aren't to blame, says Joe Cummings, who wrote Lonely Planet's Thailand guide. He says industrial pollution, overfishing and a long history of rampant logging, legal and illegal, have done the real damage to the environment. Cummings' guidebook even warns tourists to steer clear of the Phi Phi islands. "The park administrators have allowed development on Phi Phi Don to continue unchecked," he writes. "I'm all for boycotting travel to Phi Phi Don until the national park comes to terms with greedy developers." In recent years, the park has been overrun by group tours from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. They hired jet skis and rode glass-bottom boats to see bird-nesting sites at Phi Phi Leh. "PPI is trashed," says Noah Shepherd, a British environmental tourism consultant in Phuket. He cites lack of water treatment, sewage and planning, and says the film-makers will likely leave the island in better condition than before they arrived. "Besides," he adds, "this isn't a sanctuary, and we're not talking endangered species here."
