T A B L E_T A L K Beautiful Chiapas. Mysterious Coba. Where are the best places to visit in Mexico? Share your memories and make plans in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk   Find a world of travel books -- new, rare and out-of-print -- at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     R E C E N T L Y Looking for Abdelati By Tanya Shaffer An unexpected journey into the heart of a family in Casablanca (02/07/99) This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news from across the globe (02/05/99) Dead ends in London By Laura Billings Jack the Ripper returns to life on a grisly but gripping tour (02/04/99) Korea's no-man's-land By Rolf Potts The DMZ is one of the planet's oddest tourist attractions, where visitors can pick up everything from propaganda to perfume (02/03/99) Suite liberties By Chris Haines A travel magazine employee gets free luxury hotel rooms and four-course feasts -- but there's always a price to pay (02/02/99) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		STORMING "THE BEACH" | PAGE 1, 2, 3 - - - - - - - - - - Day two: Jan. 18 -- The Hokey Pokey Although historically influenced by traders from China, Portugal, Malaysia and India, the beach villages of Phuket island now seem to belong to northern Europe as much as anyplace. Western tourists abound, prices are steep and miniature golf is readily available. Since the cast and crew of "The Beach" sleep in Phuket, I came here with the intention of scouting out some information before I set off for Phi Phi Leh. Now that I've arrived, however, I'm a bit stumped on just how I'm supposed to scout out information. Mostly I've just been walking around and talking with other travelers, which is not much different from what I did on Khao San Road in Bangkok. But talking with other wanderers is telling in and of itself, since nobody in the backpacker crowd wants to admit even the slightest interest in DiCaprio or the filming of the movie. Instead, nearly everyone I've met talks about their own travels in wistful terms eerily similar to the characters in Garland's book. It would be difficult to characterize the nuances from each of my beachfront and street-cafe conversations this afternoon, but I can easily summarize: Phuket, it is generally agreed, is a tourist shithole -- best served for anthropological studies of fat German men who wear Speedos. For the ghost of Phuket past, try the islands of Malaysia or Cambodia. Laos, incidentally, is still charming and unspoiled, like rural Thailand in the '80s. The hill-tribe trekking around Sapa in Vietnam is as full of wonder and surprise as Chiang Mai treks were a decade ago. Goa and Koh Phangan still can't live up to their early '90s legacy; rumor crowns Central America the new cutting edge of rave. Sulawesi is, part and parcel, Bali 10 years ago. Granted, I have condensed what I heard -- but for all the talk, you would think that paradise expired some time around 1989. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I am currently staying at the $5-a-night On On Hotel in Phuket City, where a few interior scenes for "The Beach" will be shot in March. Since it is an official movie location, I had secretly hoped it would be brimming with an eccentric array of film groupies, security personnel and rampaging Leo-worshippers. Instead, the open-air lobby is filled with moths, mopeds and old Thai men playing chess. Earlier this evening, I spent a couple of hours here chatting and sipping Mekhong whiskey with Ann and Todd, a young couple from Maryland. Our conversation started when I heard Ann quoting a book review of "The Beach" from Phuket's English newspaper, which described backpack travelers as "uniformly ill-clad ... all bearing Lonely Planet guidebooks and wandering from one shabby guest house to the next in search of banana pancakes, tawdry tie-dies and other trash particularly their own." Since we agreed we prefer the Whitmanesque stereotype of backpack travel -- pocketless of a dime, purchasing the pick of the earth and whatnot -- this led to a discussion of what actually distinguishes backpack travelers from tourists. On the surface, it's a simple distinction: Tourists leave home to escape the world, while travelers leave home to experience the world. Tourists, Ann added wittily, are merely doing the hokeypokey: putting their right foot in and taking their right foot out; calling themselves world travelers while experiencing very little. Todd and I agreed that this was a brilliant analogy, but after a few more drinks we began to wonder where backpack travelers fit into the same paradigm. This proved to be a problem. Do travelers, unlike tourists, keep their right foot in a little longer and shake it all about? Do travelers actually go so far as to do the hokeypokey and turn themselves around -- thus gaining a more authentic experience? Is that what it's all about? The effects of alcohol pretty much eliminated serious reflection at the time, but now that my buzz is gone I can only conclude that the hokeypokey -- whether done well or poorly -- is still just the hokeypokey. Or, to put it another way: Regardless of one's budget, itinerary and choice of luggage -- the act of travel is still, at its essence, a consumer experience. Do we travel so that we can arrive where we started and know the place for the first time -- or do we travel so that we can arrive where we started having earned the right to take T.S. Eliot out of context? The fact that it's too late to know the difference makes my little mission to Phi Phi Leh less quirky than it sounds. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Day three: Jan. 19 -- Lord of the lies Except for the fact that I met the producer of "The Beach" and somehow ended up stealing his Italian-leather screenplay binder, today hasn't been all that eventful. Mostly I've just been rereading Garland's novel. Tomorrow I leave for Phi Phi Don. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - This morning's Bangkok Post featured a press statement from DiCaprio, who declared his love of Thailand, his affection for the Thai people and his sincere concern for the local ecology. The ecology comment comes on the heels of an environmental controversy that has been brewing since last fall, when 20th Century Fox announced it was going to plant 100 coconut palm trees on the Phi Phi Leh movie set. The reasoning, apparently, was that Phi Phi Leh didn't quite meet the Hollywood standards of what an island in Thailand should look like. The months following the coconut palm announcement have been fraught with protests, promises, legal action, threatened legal action, publicity stunts and rumor. Thai environmental activists claimed the palms would disrupt the island's ecosystem; 20th Century Fox responded by reducing the number of trees to 60. When activists derided this as a meaningless gesture, 20th Century Fox (perhaps misunderstanding the difference between ecology and landscape maintenance) paid a $138,000 damage deposit to the Thai Royal Forest Department and planted the trees anyway. Now environmentalists are claiming that producers flaunted their earlier compromise and brazenly planted no less than 73 trees at topsoil depths up to a meter deeper than had previously been agreed. While the precise facts of this controversy would require a Warren Commission reunion, the fact remains that 20th Century Fox's actions are a drop in the environmental bucket compared to the large-scale tourist development that has besieged southeast Asia's islands over the last decade. Garland alludes to this phenomenon in his novel: "Set up in Bali, Koh Phangan, Koh Tao, Boracay, and the hordes are bound to follow. There's no way you can keep it out of the Lonely Planet, and once that happens, it's countdown to doomsday." Countdown to doomsday. Kind of makes a person wonder if Garland was aware of the irony when he sold his novel's film rights to a media entity that makes Lonely Planet look like an obscure pamphlet publisher based out of the back of someone's Vanagon. Protests aside, the real environmental impact of the filming won't be determined until after the movie appears in theaters and half a million star-struck teenagers in places like Nebraska and New Brunswick simultaneously decide that they, too, are going to buy a ticket to Thailand to seek out the last paradise on earth. N E X T+P A G E | Playing spy around the movie hotel _________________________________ For more information: _________________________________