New Years Party results in a massive garbage problem in Phuket

I guess everyone wants to have a good New Year party and that's exactly what they did in one of Thailand's other seriously over-rated destinations.

The lack of concern for the environment or just anyone else is extremely annoying and profound in these images.

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This is Patong Beach in Phuket, Thailand on the morning of January 1st, 2026. Patong Beach is the busiest beach in all of Phuket and it is overcrowded as can be. I have a friend who lives in Phuket and the last time I went to go visit him there we stopped briefly by this hellhole of a beach and I wanted to get out of there as soon as we could. Unfortunately the rest of the island suffers from the same over-population that Patong has and by the time I was leaving his house on a weekend the number one thing that we did while I was there - or the thing we did that took up the majority of our time - was sitting in traffic.

But this level of complete lack of concern for others that is on full display at Patong on the morning of January 1st is just astounding.

People will be very quick to blame foreigners for this and they would mostly be correct in this finger pointing. However, I can say from having been there that these people didn't carry all of this down there from a distant shop, it was almost certainly sold by vendors there for a profit and I have been there on non party days and the vendors rarely will provide any sort of place for you to dispose of anything. It's almost like they want to carry their stuff down there to the beach, sell it at a huge markup, then not be responsible for its removal at all.

I'm not saying this as some sort of excuse for the people littering but I've been there with my own legs and seen it with my own eyes. If you are going to sell things to people in single use containers then not provide them with anywhere to dispose of it, this is what you end up with.

At the moment the government is not pointing any fingers and isn't really even talking about this at all because the tourism sector of Thailand has taken a serious hit in the past few years, if you can believe that from these images. In 2025 Thailand lost its number one spot for tourism in South East Asia for the first time since they started tracking tourism levels in the region and now is desperately trying to gain some of their former glory back.

For me, when you want a ton of people in a place, you also need to be willing and capable of dealing with that many people actually being there. The fact that Phuket is just one huge grid-locked traffic nightmare with no more space to build any more roads, and the fact that any time people get together no sort of disposal plan is enacted, kind of suggests to me that perhaps Thailand's tourism numbers are dropping to exactly where they should be.

They can't handle the amount of people they already attract and they are looking for more? That makes very little sense to me.

If I was partying on this beach though, I have to say that I would still not leave my bottles just on the ground, I would have carried them to at least near the street so that some sort of recycler might feel compelled to pick it up.

This is a terrible sight for sure, but the people who are jumping to conclusions to blame tourist for being irresponsible with their trash aren't seeing the whole picture here. Lack of facilities, lack of enforcement, and lack of care on the part of the people who benefit financially from these parties are to blame as well, perhaps even more so than the people that were in attendance.