Word: thailand
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...symbiosis of modern man and primal nature. And if these attractions don't give you a high, then the free dope will--it sprouts like kudzu all over the place. Now Richard, the narrator of the book and film The Beach, has somehow reached this ideal island in Thailand, this littoral dream made literal. But Utopia isn't good enough for Richard, because he's questing, he's weak, he's ornery...he's Leonardo DiCaprio...
Tamara graduated from the University of Wisconsin last spring and headed east, first to Japan and then to Thailand. She had planned on a two-week stopover on the islands off Thailand's Surat Thani province. She's been here seven months...
There are at least 2,000 kids like Tamara here on Ko Pha-Ngan island, a 20-sq.-mi., palm-fringed, mountainous speck off the eastern coast of Thailand. The beaches are pristine--white sand, yellow boulders, coral reefs and gently slapping waves. You can rent a bungalow for $5 a day. The boys and girls seem to be young, thin and beautiful. They convene from all over the globe: club kids from London, bar hostesses from Tokyo, English teachers from Taipei, tech refugees from Silicon Valley--all looking to partake of this new civilization on the island that...
...time Alex Garland used it as the setting for his 1997 novel about young travelers in Thailand searching for the garden of Eden, Ko Pha-Ngan was already a legend on the Asian traveling circuit. Garland's The Beach has taken on a talismanic quality here: waterlogged paperbacks pass from bungalow to bungalow. It is the founding myth of this place: you come looking for paradise...
...Ngan for five generations--since their forefathers migrated from Hainan island off the coast of China--the notion of Western kids coming here and convincing themselves that they are pioneering a new civilization is further proof that these farangs (foreigners) are as clueless as they look. For one thing, Thailand is a real country, with real laws that it expects tourists to abide. "I don't know about any 'new civilization,'" says police captain Suthat Phronakson. "What they seem to be doing is smoking a lot of dope, having sex with each other and walking around in their underwear...