Sitting in a bike saddle eight hours a day, day after day, takes a physical and mental toll. I wound my way through the Carpathians, the Alps and the Pyrenees – racking up enough elevation to summit Everest five times over. Some days were sublime, such as cycling through Slovenia or along Spain’s Costa Brava. Many days were a slog; often this journey felt like it would never end. But I pushed through the tough patches because I was powered by a higher purpose.
After ten weeks on the road, my wheels had traced a line from the cold Baltic to the warm mouth of the Mediterranean.
Back in Phuket, I started sketching a celebratory piece for this paper – something between an adventure story and a geriatric field report. I’d share the intimate details of what 100 kilometers a day does to a body, especially one old enough to know better. I’d also reflect on how this ride reshaped my views on age and aging, and the eternal debate between the journey and just wanting the journey to be over.
But before I could write any of this, I went for a walk on Natai beach.
The beach looked much as it always does this time of year. After nearly three months in Europe, it felt blissful to sink my toes once again into the Andaman sand. The flotsam no longer shocked me – plastic and glass bottles, the occasional flip-flop, tree trunk, or unlucky fish scattered along the tide line. It’s a familiar sight during monsoon season and one of the reasons I chose to ride 6,000 kilometers in support of the Sustainable Maikhao Foundation, who organises beach cleanups, eco-education and recycling drives across Greater Phuket.
Tragic
As I returned home from that walk, I noticed something tragic. My feet were smeared in tar-like oil.
I had just burned through a continent’s worth of calories to help Save Our Seas. I thought I was taking on a plastics problem. Turns out, plastic is only the tip of a much oilier iceberg. The real villains – tar balls and oil slicks – have seeped into the Andaman, into the sand, into our fragile ecosystem.
When I looked down, the evidence was right there: a black, sticky ooze plastered to my feet, wedged between my toes. If it’s on me, it’s in the fish we eat, the turtles we rescue, the birds that skim the surf. The sea isn’t just polluted – it’s poisoned.
It’s a tragedy hiding in plain sight – and no one’s shouting about it. Hardly anyone’s even talking about it.
After spending half an hour hunched over with an old toothbrush, scraping the tar from my feet, I switched into investigative mode. I reached out to friends – locals and longtime expats – to find out what was going on. To my surprise, most had no idea this was happening. Even worse, the contamination isn’t confined to Natai Beach. Mai Khao and other stretches of Phuket’s Andaman coastline are suffering the same oily fate.
Exasperation
This oil contamination, I was flabbergasted to learn, has occurred multiple times on our West coast, most recently in 2021 and 2023. A report by Chulalonghorn University identifies more than 40 mystery oil spill incidents in Thailand’s Andaman and Gulf waters since 2014.
“It’s a disaster,” one friend commented with a whiff of exasperation. “This was probably caused by boats dumping oil at sea, which the recent storm washed ashore.”
One hotel GM told me he reported this situation to the local authorities, but he believes the only response will be to further kick the problem upward to higher authorities.
I turned to the person who knows the most about Saving Our Seas. “Almost every year we have this recurring problem of the sticky tarballs,” Michelle Mouillé, the founder of Sustainable Maikhao, explained to me. “I first noticed this in June 2022, a week before the country opened up for tourism after COVID. Since then, it happens every year between June and October. The Department of Marine and Coastal Resources is trying to track the tarball footprint, but it’s hard to pinpoint which ships in the Andaman Sea are responsible for this contamination.”
She ended our conversation with this sobering message: “The problem is so much larger than our resources.”
For an island whose prosperity rests upon pristine waters and picturesque beaches, this should be an urgent SOS distress call – to Save Our Seas.
Todd Miller lives at Natai Beach. His 5,911 km TransEuropa 2025 bike ride is in support of Sustainable Maikhao Foundation. The Phuket News is the media sponsor. https://sustainablemaikhaofoundation.org/