Sishir Chang describes his visit to Thailand and the rehabilitation efforts underway.

I hesitated for a moment as I walked up to the sea that swallowed people. Then I stepped into the clear blue waters of the Thai bay. I had just arrived in Phuket, Thailand a few hours ago and morbid thoughts like that were hard to avoid. This was a place that I had wanted to come to for years and even though I had been to Southeast Asia many times something else had always come up. Finally five weeks after a tsunami that had killed hundreds of people on the beach that I was standing on I was here. I had come to one of the hardest hit places by the December 26th tsunami to see for myself how the people were recovering and how those of us concerned about them could help. I came expecting to see devastation and hardship, which I found, but also much more. I found a beautiful country and people rapidly rebuilding from one of the worst disasters in human history and who are eager to invite visitors back to their country. I heard gripping tales of survival, tragic stories of loss and witnessed destruction on an unbelievable scale. I found frustration among survivors and aid workers but also surprising resilience. I found unbridled hedonism in the midst of wreckage, economic recovery and aid in unlikely ways.

The need to do something
On the day after Christmas I got a cryptic phone call from my mother. My mother lives in Singapore and has a vacation home on an island near there on the sea. At about 7AM I heard the phone ring but was slow getting to it so I went back to sleep. I woke up about 2 hours later and listened to the message from my mother. She simply said she was in the center of the island at a hotel and was OK and that was it. I didn’t understand what that meant until I flipped to the CNN website and suddenly realized that a major tsunami had struck the same region where my mother was. Like many Americans over the course of that day I was shocked by the images of destruction and the rising death toll. I realized right away that this was a disaster like no other and that as a human being I needed to do something.

Over the course of the next week I helped to organize a coalition of local Asian-American groups to work together on tsunami relief. The scope of this disaster brought together Asian communities that don’t often work together and it was heartening to see such diverse groups as Tamils working alongside Japanese for one cause. All of us felt that this was a unique disaster and that our response not only would help thousands of our brethren in Asia but also could bring together the disparate Asian community here. For me at times bringing together the community seemed almost as important as the disaster because without immediate family or friends the tsunami and its victims were tragic but still remote and impersonal.

As the relief effort got going I had a long planned for trip pending to go see my family in Asia. Raising money for the tsunami I decided that since I was going to the region I should also go see first hand the affects of the tsunami and how people were recovering. I considered going to a few different locations and settled on Phuket, Thailand as the most practical. At the travel agency in Singapore I was told that my choices for lodging were limited because several resorts had been destroyed but that it was still safe to go. So I put aside any concern and went ahead to Phuket, not fully knowing what to expect but still excited.

Coming to Phuket
The runway of the airport at Phuket sits almost at the edge of the sea. As the plane came in low over the water to land I could almost imagine this would be the view one would see if they had surfed in on the tsunami. The flight in and the airport itself seemed relatively sparse but there still were tourists coming in and at the arrival hall I was greeted by the sight of statuesque Scandinavian women waiting to whisk Swedish package tourists off to their resort. For a moment I could almost imagine that no disaster had happened and I was there on a slow day. Then I saw a column with pictures of foreigners still missing and information about Western Consulates for those looking for loved ones. At that moment the disaster stopped being a remote menace to be nobly dealt with. Now it was intimate because I was where it happened seeing the actual human costs.

As I talked to people in Phuket I found that many could feel the weight of the tragedy. Michelle, a 20ish Canadian, told me that she had come partly out of curiosity about the tsunami and when she got to the beach she at first had been afraid to go into the water. In the water you would often get mildly stung by tiny jellyfish and Michelle had at times felt like these were the spirits of the dead in the water. I heard from Rosemary Breen, a relief worker from Australia that sometimes she felt the ghosts of the dead in the destroyed village she was working at.

It’s hard to reconcile thoughts like that with a place like Phuket. This is one of the most beautiful places in the world and it is sometimes achingly beautiful. The water is blue and clear, the beaches white with floury sand, there are palm trees and emerald clad hills with gaudy temples and the people are golden hued and lithe with warmth to match. Even the tsunami couldn’t reduce the natural beauty of the place. For foreigners coming from cold dark snowy lands this place is practically paradise.

The Damage
In the main tourist town of Patong and many other places the damage is hard to ignore. Even though all of the bodies and most of the debris has been cleaned up it would be impossible to miss that a major disaster had struck here. All along the waterfront there are still ruins. Frantic repair and rebuilding efforts are in progress and many businesses have reopened even in the midst of the devestation. Thai tsunami survivors Taem and Chai (many Thais go by a single monosyllabic nickname) had set up a drink stall in the foyer of a ruined building. Taem pointed out the staircase where she had run up when the tsunami hit and mentioned that three people had died including one American in that building. Still she had come back and set up shop again in the middle of the now derelict building.

Sights like that became fairly common in Patong and it wasn’t unsurprising to walk into a ruined building and find people selling t-shirts, DVD’s or even some tourists sitting down to lunch with a sea view thanks to a wall destroyed by the tsunami. Everywhere I went the Thais put out their best face to visitors and, at least on the surface, there was no trace of depression or misery about the tsunami. One restaurant even posted a banner saying “The Tsunami Can’t Beat Us! We still have the best Homemade Pizza in Town.”

Other places were in worse shape than Patong with the worst at Khao Lak and Bang Niang a 100 kilometers (63 miles) north of Phuket. There resorts had been practically wiped out leaving the area looking more like a war zone than a vacation region. Running along the cost for about 25 kilometers (17 miles) was devastation coming inland almost a kilometer (2/3 of a mile). The land there in many places appeared to have been cleared of both human structures and plants down to the orange colored dirt. At one spot that is rapidly becoming a tourist spot a police patrol boat had been washed ashore a kilometer. That spot also showed the sharp limit of the tsunami. On the seaward side of the boat it was cleared out dirt while on the landward side there was still jungle.

In the ruins of the resorts steel rebar sat twisted like spaghetti along with blown out brick walls, and pulverized concrete as testaments to the power of the tsunami. There also were many reminders that at one time this was a place of fun and relaxation, an elegant shoe, a bikini top, eyeglass cases and even a guidebook to Thailand. The ghosts of those who came to this place to escape the stress of their daily lives was almost palpable. To appease those ghosts scattered throughout the ruins was “ghost” money, the Taoists paper talismans meant to appease the dead, and offerings of flowers and fruit. In ironic counterpoint to all of the death and destruction the beach appeared to be the one place that still remained beautiful.

Like many natural disasters the tsunami showed a surprising capriciousness. While Khao Lak suffered the most it was geographically the farthest from the epicenter of the quake that spawned the tsunami. Patong was damaged badly and the next beach north Kamala was also badly hit yet Surin the beach after that was untouched. The chance arrangement of geography, water depth, sheltering islands and reefs all conspired to determine how bad one place was hit while another was spared. As chance would have it many of the most places coveted by tourists were hit while those mainly occupied by Thais were spared.

Tales of Survival
The Monk’s Tale:
Abbot Poon Sawatt presides over Wat Kamala, the small Buddhist temple that serves the village of Kamala. On the morning of December 26th at 9:50AM he was on the second floor of the monks’ residence readying a talk he was going to give that morning. As he looked out over the bay he noticed the water was very dark and rushing onto land. Soon the temple and its grounds were under about a meter (3 feet) of water but in about 2 minutes the water subsided leaving many fish trapped on land. The locals began to collect the fish but as they did so the water came back this time higher and higher. Soon the pictures of the life of the Buddha that decorated the second story of the temple were no longer visible and boats were being dragged inland. The building the Abbot was in broke and he found himself suddenly being tumbled underwater. As he tumbled he heard a roaring sound that filled his ears. Eventually he managed to grab onto a tree and pull himself up above the water. As he pulled himself up he had to fend off debris with his free hand and saw a bus being pushed by the water. He suddenly noticed a tin roof coming towards him and dove back under to avoid getting his head cut off by the roof. As he did so more water struck and pushed him inland further. After awhile the water dumped him onto a pile of sand almost 700 meters (2,100 feet) away from the temple. He had survived but lost all of his clothes and grabbed a shirt to tie around him to go to the hospital. Even though he and another monk had lived three monks in the same building had died. 63 others, including 22 foreigners, had also lost their lives in Kamala. A school near the temple had been devastated but fortunately wasn’t in session at the time.

“Water Go Home!”:
Peter and Gerti Trausdorf are Austrians in their 60’s who spend winters in Phuket. At around 10:00 AM on December 26th they had just gotten to the beach and Peter had just ordered his breakfast of Johk (Thai rice porridge) as he was settling down one of the cabana workers told him that the water had disappeared. He looked up and noticed that the water had gone out of Patong Bay about 600 meters (1,800 feet) or more. Several fish were stranded on the bottom of the suddenly dry bay. Peter thought no more of it as his food arrived. Just as he started to take his first bite Gerti started screaming “The water is coming back!” Peter looked up to see a wall of water rapidly approaching the beach. He jumped up onto a low sea wall and grabbed onto a railing as the water rose up to one and a half meters (5 feet) around him. As he clung on he realized that he couldn’t see his wife. Unknown to him Gerti was trapped on the beach underneath beach umbrellas that had been displaced by the wave. Just as suddenly the water receded and Gerti managed to get clear of the umbrellas. Peter grabbed his wife and pulled her up just in time as the next wave hit. This one was much larger and as the water rose it lifted Peter and Gerti up above the level of the railing. As Peter was lifted up about a meter (3 feet) above the railing he hung on with one hand and with the other to his wife while around him beach umbrellas, motorbikes and even cars were being thrown about. Fortunately none of them hit them. As the wave lifted them higher and higher he started to shout, “Water go home!” As he shouted the water did start receding but as it did it brought debris out with it. Peter and Gerti found themselves having to fend off debris as it came hurtling at them. A tree struck Peter in the leg just below the knee and gashed him badly. As the water rushed past the tree broke and was swept out. Finally the water dropped back down to normal and Peter noticed his leg badly bleeding. He and Gerti realized they needed to get to a hospital and started to make their way up the ruined streets. As they did Gerti fell into a sinkhole but managed to hang onto Peter who pulled her out. Stopping at a store Peter got some rice whiskey and washed out his wound. As they made their way down the main street of Patong, a block away and running parallel to the beach, the next wave hit. This one was even larger and Peter and Gerti rapidly scrambled up the steps of a bank to get away. Once the water receded again they ran into a police officer who seeing how badly Peter was bleeding commandeered a truck to take him through the flooded streets to the hospital in central Patong.

At the hospital wounded and dead were streaming in. A nurse stitched Peter up quickly while medical personal set up a triage system to deal with the most injured. As the staff dealt with those wounded more severally than Peter he got some dressings and disinfectant and bandaged up his wound. At that point he felt well enough to go back to his hotel and refused an offer to be flown to the international hospital in Phuket. Even though he felt well enough to go the hospital staff wouldn’t let him leave the hospital because for the next several hours rumors of another tsunami would come in each hour and the staff would frantically herd people up to the second floor of the hospital. By 5 PM it was obvious that another tsunami wasn’t going to hit and they left the hospital. In the water they had lost all of their keys, money and anything else they had on the beach. Peter was forced to break into his hotel room with a piece of metal debris.

Even though they endured the worst of the tsunami Peter and Gerti have decided to remain in Phuket and to come back next year. Their son has asked them to come back to Austria but they figure that the tsunami is a small price to pay to get away from the cold and the snow of Austrian winter. Anyway as Peter said with a smile, “Now I know when a tsunami is coming. When the water disappears I know to run. Sometimes when I’m sleeping on the beach I wake up to see if the water is still there. If it is I know everything is all right and go back to sleep.”

Come to Phuket:
Even with the scale of the tsunami Phuket still remains beautiful. Unfortunately for the Thais the place is far below its tourist capacity and I had heard that many tourists are staying away out of fear, uncertainty and even guilt. In Patong I was told by everyone that I talked to that the number of visitors was very down. November to May is supposed to be their high season when many businesses earn enough money to make it through the rest of the year. The beach at Patong was only about half full while some other beaches, even those untouched by the tsunami, had even less. At night many of the bars and restaurants were nearly empty, often to the consternation of the Thai women who worked them as hostesses or to troll for lonely foreigners.

Tourism is the backbone of Phuket’s economy and without it recovery will be very difficult, if not impossible. In the town of Kamala I spoke to Tan, a shopkeeper who had lost three of his stores and was in the process of rebuilding one of them. The store he said was being paid for from his own savings and a bank loan and whether he could rebuild his other stores would depend on how well the next few seasons went. The Thais and frequent visitors all wanted to let people know that tourists should return to Phuket. Some visitors who had been to Phuket before and enjoyed it were upset by what they felt was overblown and sometimes wrong coverage by the media regarding the extent of damage. Marty Testa, a visitor from Ohio, even tried to call a radio station back home to tell them that they were exaggerating the extent of damage to Phuket. Debbie Cliff and Celia Frodham frequent visitors to Phuket from England said that Phuket had gotten a lot of bad publicity and that its time it got some good publicity. At first many of their friends had told them not to go to Phuket but they went ahead anyway and have not regretted their decision. Even though I was speaking to them on the ruins of a seawall where once a seafood restaurant that they frequented stood they said, “you can still do everything as before.”

Tsunami Tourism:
With so much attention being paid to the tsunami many of the Thais sought to capitalize on it. At many souvenir stalls there were tsunami VCD’s and DVD’s for sale while T-shirt shops sold tsunami t-shirts featuring the Hokusai woodblock print of The Wave. At some places they offered to sell pictures from the tsunami such as of a man running away from a wave breaking through the tops of palm trees, a car on top of a building and piles of debris and bodies washing up along a beach. On the ride in from the airport my driver even offered me a tsunami day package to go see the worst hit place by the tsunami. He even added that lunch and shopping stops would be included.

While it seems crass to commercially take advantage of the tsunami the residents of Phuket are suffering very much economically because of it. Several Thais that I spoke to said they’re getting very little aid from the government or from major relief agencies. Maem a cabana vendor in Patong was typical, her business had been wiped out in the tsunami and since then she had only received 2,000 Baht (around $50) from the government and nothing from aid organizations. The most aid she had received was 200 Euros from a German for saving his life. Vhola Nathku, an Indian tailor, was rebuilding his store with insurance money but had received nothing from the government, both Thai and Indian. He also said that practically all of the reconstruction being done in Patong was from insurance. A few other Indian tailors I spoke to couldn’t even count on insurance and they called themselves “tsunami refugees” since they had no livelihood after their shop was destroyed and were left hoping to find some other work. The desperation brought on by the tsunami had caused some businesses to include a direct appeal to aid to potential customers like a sign at a massage parlor that said, “Massage; Please to subsidize victim tsunami to pay off debts.”

Sex, Drugs and Tsunami Relief:
Thailand is known for its beauty and culture but the country also has a seamy reputation. For decades it’s been a major stop for sex tours and a place for unabashed hedonism. Even with the tsunami that was still true and judging from the majority of tourists still coming to Patong the pursuit of pleasures of the flesh was alive and well. A ubiquitous site in Patong was fat middle-aged European men with small delicate Thai women. You would see them walking on the beach, shopping in town, eating in restaurants and drinking in bars. Foreign men without women would often be in the process of finding women and scantily clad Thai women would be in the process of finding foreign men. Some of the time the interaction would be a straight up exchange of money for sex which some men were fairly brazen about but in many cases these foreign lonely hearts would get a temporary Thai girlfriend to spend time with. They would take them out at night and to the beach while paying for their meals, buy them gifts and give them money. In turn the women would keep them company both sexually and emotionally for all purposes like any other happy couple on vacation. The Patong scene catered to more than just heterosexual men but there were also many slight Thai men accompanying foreign men along with others who catered to heterosexual women. According to a female visitor from Ireland a Thai women had even offered her services to her.

With tourism down there was an over abundance of Thai women, and men, looking for foreigners. In many of the bars it was common to see several skimpily clad Thai women sitting around looking for men. Anytime an unaccompanied foreign male would enter the bar these women would aggressively pounce on him and vie for his attention. To some this was a boon as Warrick an Englishman in his forties and a frequent visitor to Patong enthusiastically confided in me, “There are so many girls out there you can pick the best.” Also following the law of supply and demand he mentioned that now was a great time to get women because prices were down, “for about $50 you can get a girl for all night,.”

Prostitution is technically illegal in Thailand but is tolerated and there seems to be no shame among the Thais about it. Thai culture has historically been accepting of having mistresses. At the same time the appetite for sex and companionship continues to draw many men to Phuket in spite of the tsunami. With tourism down overall it’s very likely that without these men there might not be any tourism at all.

Tsunami relief also came from indulgences besides sex. A few bars advertised reduced priced or special drinks because of the tsunami and even drug dealers chipped in to help. While I was there a local drug dealer of a type of mephamphetamine called “Ya-Ba” was arrested. His angle for getting customers was that he pledged to donate a third of his profits to tsunami relief. This proved so successful that he quit his regular job to deal full time. He also stuck to his pledge and by the time of his arrest he had donated about 13,000 Baht ($325) to the Army’s tsunami relief fund.

The Resilience of Survivors:
The resilience of those who have survived the tsunami is often astounding. Many of the foreigners who have survived and remain in Phuket are elderly and have chosen to stay because of their love of the place. Marius Poatalle a 75-year-old survivor from Monaco said that he had been washed out of the second floor of his hotel. “I pray to God, Allah, Buddha, anyone!” he said. Even after that experience he still hung out on the beach at Patong showing off the scars he got from the tsunami and haranguing people about French colonial policies in broken English. Another elderly survivor from Australian I met in a Patong nightclub had broken his hip in the tsunami yet in his words the worst thing that happened was that he “couldn’t enjoy all of the lovely Thai ladies.”

The Thais are more circumspect about surviving tsunami. Many of them feel privileged that they’ve survived. According to Maem, a cabana vendor in Patong, “My customers die but I live.” Outwardly its difficult to see if they are suffering from depression or post traumatic stress but I did hear from aid workers and a monk that there are many who are suffering but don’t show it. Aid workers say that in the refugee camps many children have nightmares about being swallowed up by waves. Duane Reid a volunteer paramedic from Australia, said that he’d seen Thais staring fixedly at the sea. Even so he stated that the Thais have dealt with the aftermath far better than he expected, “In Australia after a major disaster people are depressed but here the Thais still seem friendly and upbeat.” He added, “These people have been to hell and back its just amazing what they’ve done.”

Frustration over Aid:
One of the most frequent complaints I heard about was the slow and frustrating pace of aid. There’s been such a huge outpouring of aid yet many average Thais don’t feel that much of that has gotten down to them. Many people coming out to help also feel frustrated by the bureaucracy and pace of aid. All of the aid workers that I’d spoken to had bypassed the major relief agencies and governments to come and deliver aid or volunteer themselves. At Khao Lak one resort had set up its own tsunami volunteer aid center staffed by people who had showed up on their own to help. According to the aid center’s spokesperson Sophie Konnaris, all of them are volunteers who have come on their own money and time with very few having training or experience in dealing with disasters. In other cases individual towns in western countries have raised money to send volunteers. Duane Reid and George Thomson, volunteer paramedics, were sponsored by their hometown of Emerald, Queensland in Australia to come and help. While the town of Inverell in New South Wales, Australia had adopted the village of Bang Niang. There Rosemay Breen and Anna Thivakon brought with them aid and resources to help rebuild the village that had been wiped out by the tsunami. In a true example of ad hoc aid they enlisted a group of Italians from the organization Nuovo Akropoli (New Acropolis) who had showed up on their own accord at one of the refugee camps to see where they could help out. There they met Rosemary and Anna who quickly put them to work on rebuilding houses in Bang Niang.

Frequent visitors and tourists to Phuket have also been bringing aid apart from official channels. I met the Grimm family in Kamala where the mixed Australian and German family had been having reunions for years. They had planned this year’s reunion well in advance of the tsunami but had had some trepidation about whether to come after the tsunami. As one member of the family put it, “Some of our friends thought it was disgusting to see people sunbathing where people had died.” After emailing people they knew in Thailand who told them to come they went ahead. For them this trip has turned into more of an aid mission than a vacation because they brought with them funds they had raised at home to distribute to people they knew in Kamala. Many of these funds were raised from people who lived in their home countries but who they had met in Kamala. On the day I met them they were there to see if the locals they knew had survived the tsunami. Unfortunately the resort they usually stayed at had been damaged by the tsunami and they had to stay at another beach.

Other examples of ad hoc aid coming to the region was in the rebuilding of the temple and school in Kamala by the Grand Lodge of Western Australia and the Thai Rotary Club. Also in Kamala the Thai Rotary Club is helping fishermen get new boats. Sia, a Kamala resident, had owned four houses and a restaurant and laundry business with her family, which had been destroyed along with her sister and niece killed. She has since started reconstruction with aid donated by old customers from Europe. While I ate lunch in her makeshift restaurant she proudly showed off the construction work being done and pictures of the German who donated the money to buy the concrete. According to Sia it doesn’t do much good to give money to the Thai government or major aid groups but its better to bring it directly to the people.

Ongoing needs:
From everyone I talked to and seeing for myself the recovery is going very well. There are some places much more damaged than others where it will take a long time to recover but in general reconstruction is progressing well. Almost all of the bodies have been recovered but there are still around a 1,000 still missing and also around a 1,000 bodies still waiting to be identified. There hasn’t been any major health threat from the tsunami and from what I found there is plenty of food, water and medicine available.

In the worst hit areas of Khao Lak and Bang Niang the most pressing need is housing as there are still a few hundred Thais living in refugee camps in that areas. Mental health specialists are also needed to help with the children and adults who are suffering post traumatic stress. According to Sophie Konnaris at the Tsunami Volunteer Center in Khao Lak how much mental health help is needed is difficult to determine because to her knowledge no major mental health evaluation had been done. Another problem that I heard from aid workers is that Western mental health specialist might not be able to help due to language and culture differences.

Also in Khao Lak many resorts were completely destroyed it will be a long time before they can be reconstructed, if ever, and open for business. Job retraining and other economic development is needed. The villagers of Bang Niang were primarily fisherman and they would like to replace the boats they lost in the tsunami to resume fishing and would like power tools to help with fixing boats and building houses.

In Patong and Kamala the biggest need is economic recovery in the form of tourists coming back. In Kamala there is still some need for housing but reconstruction is progressing both for houses and businesses. At both the Kamala health station and the Patong hospital they said that they were well stocked on medicines but still had a need to replace equipment.

Overall the message that I heard from everyone was to come visit and enjoy Phuket. Without tourism the Thais have no chance of economic recovery.

Leaving Phuket:
As I was leaving I watched the sun set through the windows of the Phuket airport. Like every other sunset I had seen in Phuket this one was beautiful. I had come as a concerned American looking to see where my aid money was going and also out of curiosity to see the aftermath of one of the worst disasters in human history. As I watched the sun go down I was still trying to comprehend all that I had seen and heard. I had been expecting something simple, survivors and aid workers nobly struggling amidst ruins to save life and restore dignity, but had found a far more complex situation of ad hoc aid, sex tourism, tsunami commercialization, frustration and reconstruction. All of those thoughts mingled in my mind as I watched another day end in paradise.