two stories

i finally managed to reach some friends of ours who were on phuket sunday morning. luckily both are ok. they were staying at cape panwa which was partially shielded and away from the face of the wave, so they escaped much of the damage though their hotel was still flooded and the local village was under 5ft of water.

some time after the tsunami struck, one of our friends went to stand on a nearby pier and saw a massive debris field stretching for miles- the current had swept everything around the southern end of phuket and carried it eastward past cape panwa. everything was in the water- chairs, clothing, furniture, tires, food, everything.

nearby is a naval base and as i type this boats are still arriving around the clock with tourists who were stranded on the islands. the large area between phuket and krabi has hundreds of small islands.

then there are the boats bringing back bodies.

when i spoke to our friend on the phone he said several times how lucky he was. in such situation there are always 'what if' thoughts. i also had wondered what if i went to phuket. for them they wondered what if they hadn't decided to stay in and instead went to phi phi as planned, or what if they had decided to take a walk on the beach. that's not a stretch by any means. very lucky indeed.

displaced tourists arrived at the hotel starting from monday morning. injured people, some on crutches, and people who have lost family members.

although many people have left phuket, our friends have decided to stay. there are a large number of people in their hotel who are staying and helping the hotel staff to clean the nearby beach every day. after each tide, however, more debris washes ashore.

lots of people have cancelled their planned holiday to thailand, even to other unaffected parts of the country. earlier today i received an email from a friend of mine who is planning to travel to bangkok next month but is being urged by his family not to go. unfortunately, it looks inevitable that although the tsunami was a freak occurance, people will think 'thailand = tsunami' and cancel their vacation plans.

this will have a broad impact in thailand, a country whose economy depends quite a lot on tourism.


i also reached a former work colleague who was staying at patong beach at the time of the tsunami. he had actually felt the earthquake as he was relaxing by the pool- recalled a swaying motion but thought at the time his chair was just unstable in the wind.

later he stepped outside on beach road to buy some suntan lotion and was walking there when the first wave came in. he took off running but said it was difficult as there was already a foot of water on the road and everything from the beach (umbrellas, chairs, bags, clothes etc) was strewn all over the place. he cut his leg on an umbrella stand as he ran kept going and managed to avoid the second and third much larger waves.

he was one of the first people back to beach road after the water subsided and some photos of him are in an australian newspaper.

he said when he returned to the beach he saw a man standing on the beach and when he got closer he realized the man was standing over the body of a dead woman. he tried to talk to the man but the man was in shock and couldn't respond. at the time what he noticed was how the beach was completely wiped clear of everything and how there was no sound- no cars, no people, just the quiet noise of the now calm sea.

after that point he said there were multiple rumors/scares of another tidal wave coming in, so everyone scrambled for higher ground. there was little news at that point so no one knew what to expect- perhaps there was a giant movie-sized wave just over the horizon- anything seemed possible at the time. he said he and a large group of people (including many injured) sat on the hillside for almost 6 hours until people began to venture back into patong, though a lot of people continued to stay on the hill 'just in case'.

he returned to the hotel to find it a complete mess, though somewhat functional as it was slightly elevated in comparison to the other hotels. many injured were in the hotel- an old german man full of small cuts, sitting in a chair with towels to stop the bleeding. a woman from singapore who couldn't locate her husband and child.

his thoughts went out to the art gallery in the hotel where he had bought a painting the day before- completely gone, to the basement shopping center across the street- full of water, to places he had been a day or two before, to people he had spoken with, to people he shared a smile or laugh with.

he collected his stuff and left for the airport, heading to safety, heading home.