Thai Malay fishermen settled Ko Phi Phi Don in the late 1940s, drawn by abundant waters and sheltered bays. The island became a coconut plantation, a quiet place where the rhythms of harvest and tide set the clock. Today the resident population remains more than 80 percent Muslim, though the thousands of transient workers who service the tourism industry have shifted the island's demographics. Between 2,000 and 3,000 permanent residents share the 10-square-kilometer island with a daily flood of visitors that can exceed a thousand. Phi Phi Don is the only inhabited island in the group; its smaller sibling, Ko Phi Phi Le, has little more than a ranger station, limestone cliffs that drop vertically into the sea, and the bay that changed everything.

On December 26, 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami struck Phi Phi Don with almost no warning. The island's narrow isthmus, where most of the tourist infrastructure was concentrated, sat barely above sea level. Approximately 70 percent of the buildings were destroyed. By July 2005, an estimated 850 bodies had been recovered and 1,200 people remained missing; local tour guides put the real toll closer to 4,000. Among Phi Phi Don's residents, 104 surviving children had lost one or both parents. Emiel Kok, a former Dutch resident, returned within two weeks to found Help International Phi Phi. His team of 68 Thai staff and more than 3,500 backpacker volunteers removed 23,000 tonnes of debris, 7,000 tonnes of it by hand. "We try and do as much as possible by hand," Kok explained, "that way we can search for passports and identification." The organization was nominated for a Time Magazine Heroes of Asia award.

The rebuild brought the tourists back faster than anyone expected. By December 2005, nearly 1,500 hotel rooms were open again. But what returned was not what had been lost. Mass tourism engulfed the islands on a scale the ecosystem could not absorb. By 2016, more than a thousand tourists arrived daily, generating 25 to 40 tonnes of waste. Without a wastewater treatment plant, 83 percent of the island's sewage flowed untreated into the sea. Maya Bay alone received up to 5,000 visitors and 200 boats a day, an intensity that bleached coral, eroded sand, and drove marine life away from the shallows. In June 2018, Thai authorities closed Maya Beach indefinitely. It did not reopen until January 1, 2022, with strict visitor caps and a ban on boats entering the bay.

Step back from the tourism debate and the islands themselves remain staggering. The Phi Phi archipelago occupies just over 12 square kilometers, most of it vertical. Limestone karsts plunge into water so clear it barely seems to exist. The national park, Hat Noppharat Thara-Mu Ko Phi Phi, covers 242,437 rai and shelters coral gardens, caves, and long white beaches flanked by jungle. The climate swings between monsoon rains from May through December and a hot, dry season from January through April, with annual rainfall averaging 2,231 millimeters. During the dry months, the Andaman Sea turns the color of bottle glass, and the cliffs catch the low sun in shades of amber and rust. From the air, the islands look like the spine of some submerged creature breaking the surface, all ridge and no flat ground, impossibly green against impossible blue.