Filming locations in Krabi

The Beach turned the search for an untouched paradise into a generation's daydream, and the paradise it found is real, though it now comes with rules. Danny Boyle's 2000 film set its fabled secret cove on an uninhabited island off Thailand's Andaman coast, and that cove is Maya Bay.

Maya Bay, on Ko Phi Phi Leh, is the location: a cliff-ringed crescent of brilliant sand and turquoise water that is exactly the hidden island commune the travellers go chasing. The cove sits offshore from Krabi, reached by boat tour from Krabi, Phuket or Phi Phi itself, and the beauty that made it a star very nearly loved it to death.

That is why how you visit now matters as much as whether you do. After years of damage the bay was closed to let the reef recover, and it has reopened with capped numbers, seasonal closures and an entry from a back-bay pier rather than the open beach, with swimming restricted. Book a regulated trip rather than turning up, and the rules become part of the experience.

Practically, treat Maya Bay as the centrepiece of a wider day on the water. The surrounding Phi Phi Islands offer snorkelling and limestone lagoons that share the same impossible colours, and an early tour gives you the bay at its calmest, before the day-trippers arrive.