A Year After the Tsunami

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We decided to get a drink at one of the few remaining beach bars that had managed to stay in business. The owner there told us that it wouldn’t be long before she too would have to close her bar as many of the tourists who came in droves before were now going elsewhere. I asked her if she felt safe working so close to the ocean. She just smiled and pointed to the new warning system that Thailand has just installed. The detector is connected to other warning centers around the world including one in Hawaii. This will allow authorities to sound the alarm supposedly hours before a wave can hit. Thailand was the first country affected by the tsunami to install such a system, evidence of the governments determination to get the tourist industry up and running again.

Next we decided to move a little further into town where some of the high end resorts are situated to see if the tourists really were staying away. My driver Somchai told me how lucky he had been that day as he had been at home, sick with a cold. Unfortunately a lot of of his friends were out working or taking a nap in their cabs waiting to pick up tourists for the day, many of them never returned.

Traveling around the hilly roads that the island is famous for, I began having flashbacks of the total mayhem that I had witnessed the day of the disaster. Cars were crashing into tour buses, bodies were being picked up off the road and thrown into the back of Thai rickshaws. The sheer panic was horrifying.

People raced down from the hills to see if they could find their families, many of whom had been working in the big hotels near the ocean. I, like so many others headed to a central shopping center—a place where authorities had arranged meeting points for tourists who had been driven back into the city. The sight of mothers and their children being reunited with joy will stick in my mind forever. Sadly, so will the images of other less fortunate men and women who found out that they would never see their loved ones again. Something else I will always remember is the kindness shown by the Thai people and how after all they had been through, they still had time to care for their guests.

Many people blame Thailand for not being prepared when the disaster struck but I wonder how prepared one can be for such a rare occurrence. Thailand was no more likely to have been hit by a tidal wave than say the UK for instance, it just doesn’t happen here. Even to the point where both myself and others guests had felt the tremor and the building shake hours before the wave hit. When we asked the staff in reception what was going on, we were told that it was probably from a heavy goods vehicle passing by and everybody headed off to the beach for breakfast. One thing that helped on the day of the disaster was the infrastructure on Phuket which is very good.

It wasn’t long before we had arrived at a very exclusive hillside resort. I went to the reception and asked about room availability—finding a room wasn’t going to be a problem even though this was the tourist season. I chatted with one of the managers at the resort and he told me that occupancy was roughly down by 30 percent for the time of year, but it looks like the bigger international hotels are confident about the future and the general consensus is that they are here to stay. Looking down onto the small bays below from the resorts’ restaurant, it’s hard to imagine that anything so terrible could have occurred in such an idyllic place.

While there, I heard about the memorials that would be held on December 26th this year. Many were held on beaches around Puhket and families from around the world came to mourn the loss of loved ones. The Thai government is eager to draw the tourists back and went as far as to offer free accommodation and flights to those who were directly affected by the disaster so they could attend the services.

Whether or not Phuket will truly ever recover from such a tragedy remains to be seen but one thing is certain, the magic and beauty of this tropical paradise, along with the warm hospitality of the Thai people in times of good and bad, will never be forgotten.

David Haynes left the UK in 1997 and began to travel extensively around Asia. His journeys included several tours of India, a hostage incident in Cambodia, and a run-in with wild buffalo in Malaysia. Finally he found his feet in Thailand where he now works at a Bangkok University developing curricula for the English department.

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