The ghosts of tsunamis past

[buksida]

This article is not only about the aftermath of the tsunami but also mentions somebody a lot of us in Hua Hin knew.

BANGKOK - One year ago, on the day after Christmas, an enormous surge of water crashed into the resort island of Phuket, shattering boats and buildings, killing hundreds, and devastating Thailand's tourism industry.

Days later, the driver of a three-wheeled motorcycle taxi made his way along a darkened island road, and was flagged down by a group of foreigners. They climbed silently into the vehicle. But when the driver turned to ask their destination, they had vanished.
Or so went the story, and there were many others like it doing the rounds of the local rumor mill in the weeks after the tsunami. It is the widespread belief in - and fear of - ghosts that to this day prevents many Thais, including my wife, from visiting Phuket, Phang Nga and other areas hit hard by the great tsunami of December 26, 2004. And so I went to Phuket by myself late this year to see how the island had recovered.

The cheerful Thai who drove me from Phuket International Airport to my hotel on Kalim Bay, north of Patong Beach, proudly showed me the new buildings that had sprouted up all along the island's west coast, replacing those that had been flattened by the wave. Then we came across a group of older buildings.

These buildings, the driver explained, had been "spared" by the tsunami. Some residents who had been out late at Christmas parties the night before actually slept through the mayhem of the next morning, and were shocked to see the death and destruction just a few meters to the north and south of their neighborhood.

The passive term "spared" is more useful to us sophisticated Westerners than it is to Thais, who still have a concept of some sort of deliberator behind what we prefer to term "the unexplained". Spared by what, or whom? It is a question we would rather not ask, let alone try to answer.

Minutes after that cluster of homes on the west coast of Phuket was spared, the tsunami proceeded across the strait toward the Thai mainland, and the province of Krabi, where my wife and I were enjoying a Christmas vacation with friends. News came to us as we were sitting at brunch in the outdoor dining area of our hotel, a hundred meters or so back from the beach, that some sort of natural disaster had happened in the Andaman Sea, and a giant wave was heading our way.

By the time I had grabbed my camera and approached the beach, the first wave had already hit, strewing debris across the beach road. The second wave was bigger, and washed across to the gravel side road where I was standing, thinking I was safe. The gravel road turned into a river, and the warm Andaman waters, now a raging soup of sand and surf and sea creatures dredged from the depths, pulled me under.

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