TWENTY-SEVEN: Tsunami

On Dec. 26, 2004, people fled as a tsunami wave came crashing ashore at Koh Raya, part of Thailand's territory in the Andaman islands and 23 kilometers from Phuket island.

(For more incredible photographs of the 2004 Asian Tsunami, I recommend http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/12/ten-years-since-the-2004-indian-ocean-tsunami/100878/) 

Many times people confuse Taiwan for Thailand, and when they find out how close the two are they ask me why I never travelled to the land of grass-roofed huts and full moon parties on the beach. Thailand was the weekend getaway of choice among Westerners in Taiwan, it’s cheap, close, exotic, and holds whatever promise you seek - adventure snorkeling through reefs and caves, hedonistic massage on the beach, white linens in a bamboo hut, and every sexual taboo imaginable. It’s all on display, according to online photo galleries, blogs, forums and tourism websites. It held no appeal to me. Why would I have wanted to be surrounded by people taking advantage of young girls, many of whom had been kidnapped and sold into the sex trade?

Some of my male Western colleagues went to Thailand often, for the sex-tour-on-a-shoestring-budget vacation. When they returned, they whispered tales of their adventures with their friends.

“They have vending machines selling used panties in Ziploc® bags. Each bag also contains a Polaroid of the woman who wore them.”

“There’s a place where they feed the women nothing but blueberries for a week. Then they sit on the client’s chest and have a dump. A big, blue, sweet-smelling dump. Some people get off on that.”

“I woke up between two brown bunnies. They looked about twelve and thirteen.”

As much as I was offended by these stories I knew they only represented part of a Thai sub-culture. I was intrigued by others’ tales of ancient temples, elephant sanctuaries, white sand, delicious, spicy food and a warm, celebratory culture, but I never made it to Thailand. The Aussie bought tickets to take me there for Christmas, but changed his mind at the last moment. Put off by the idea of paying a holiday surcharge in a country that doesn’t celebrate the holiday, he decided we were better off going to Melbourne for Christmas. So we cancelled our reservations at the Kata Beach Resort and headed to Oz instead...and Thailand had a tsunami.

Special to Runge Newspapers

Tsunami hits South Asia

December 2004

When I turned on CNN Asia this morning, I had quite a shock. A level 9 earthquake had struck off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia on Sunday. That quake created a tsunami tidal wave that smashed into Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Myanmar at 500 kph, leaving over 20,000 people dead. By now you have seen the news coverage.

I watched the scenes of tourists picking their way through the wreckage on Kata Beach on the news today and felt how close I had come to being there.

On Phi Phi island, where “The Beach” starring Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed, 200 bungalows at two resorts were swept out to sea. I had been planning a day trip there for snorkeling. The island no longer exists.

I feel like I am holding a ticket for a flight that crashed. I told a Kemptville friend just a couple of weeks ago that I would be in Phuket for Christmas. She said, “Gesundheit”. It was just a place with a funny name to many people outside Asia, before this disaster. Now it has a place on the map.

Thousands of foreigners on a relaxing winter vacation have lost their lives. Natives of Indonesia and Sri Lanka are identifying their dead with Polaroid snapshots tacked on the end of timber coffins. Hundreds of people are missing at sea and others are recovering from serious injuries in poorly equipped hospitals.

The majority of casualties in Thailand are foreigners, as this is the peak vacation season. The question that is on many minds however, is: why is it that some people were evacuated with two hours’ notice while others were hit without warning? Local reports state that there is no established warning system for earthquakes in the Indian Ocean.

Bodies are still washing up on Thai beaches. People were washed out to sea while sunbathing and snorkeling.

One of my boyfriend’s colleagues had his three-year-old daughter snatched out of his hands by a wall of water. His family has now returned home to England. At least they were able to recover her body. Another friend of ours had the roof ripped off his beach hut and he clung to the wall post until the waves calmed enough for him to swim to safety.

Our prayers go out to those who have lost loved ones in this incredible disaster. And I find myself wondering why I wasn’t among them.

“Diana. DIANA. Open your eyes. There you are! Now breathe.”

I hadn’t seen the wave coming because, of course, I hadn’t been listening when my father cautioned ‘never turn your back on the ocean’. I had been jumping in the small waves, a little scared but thrilled just the same, when the big one grew from nothing and hit me between the shoulder blades, sweeping me under the water and flattening my face into the wet sand. I was just seven years old on that trip to the Maritimes. The wave completely overtook me. Instead of fighting, I just went limp and let it wash over me. I laughed, paralyzed, in awe of its strength. It took my little body and played with it, first crushing me and knocking the wind out of me, then dragging me through the mud, out into deeper water. My joy faded into fear when I realized I didn’t know which way was up. Then, as if it suddenly changed its mind, the wave threw me back up on the beach and disappeared out into the sea.

More than once during our three years together, I thought The Aussie might be psychic. He had a really bad feeling before the tsunami, and he had a dream of people buried in rubble as the earthquake was happening in India. And then one day he told me he had had a vision of me with a dark haired man who had children of his own. I held on to that one for a while, turning it over in my mind like a shiny new penny.