In the tsunami-hit holiday resorts of Thailand, recovery is a long way off, writes Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, in Phuket
Today, the Indian Ocean looks and sounds peaceful. The waves advance and retreat in steady and regular motion. The water hits the sand with a gentle thud that reminds me pleasantly of other places and other seascapes, childhood holidays and the sheer pleasure that comes with being at the beach.
So it was, too, on the morning of December 26th at this beach and others like it in Thai resorts such as Phuket, Khao Lak and Krabi. It must have been a great feeling, especially for the Westerners who were on holiday: a sense of escape and liberation. Friends and relatives back home faced another cold winter morning, but here the tourists swam and snorkelled or simply lay back on their deckchairs and admired the fabulous Thai scenery.
Local people, too, were out and about in the morning sun. Some, like Khun Poom (21), grandson of Thailand's King Bhumibol, were on holiday and taking a turn on a jet ski. Others worked in hotels or at beachside stalls and markets while the fishermen in the village of Ban Nam Khem surveyed the previous night's catch.
Nearly everybody who was at the beach that morning was young, and photographs show that many were either handsome or beautiful, with their whole lives in front of them and hardly a care to furrow their brow. When the water receded dramatically to reveal all manner of wonderful sea species and creatures squirming in the sand, it only added to the fun.
But the animals were not happy. A pair of gibbons at Khao Lak Nature Resort, a holiday centre, had been moaning and keening all morning; dogs were whimpering; elephants - Thailand's trademark species - were unhappy and we are told they retreated from the shore to higher ground.
Most humans failed to read the signs and people are saying now that this shows how much we have become detached and remote from nature, thinking only of ourselves and the mechanistic commercial world we have constructed. By the time the massive wave appeared on the horizon it was too late to do anything other than run like mad or cling to something solid and hopefully immovable such as a tree.
I had seen some of the footage on television: the great wall of water that turned streets and beaches into raging torrents and swept everything - people, cars, houses - before it. But nothing prepares you for the sheer, Dresden-like destruction that now reigns, particularly in Khao Lak, a 20-kilometre stretch once reminiscent of the French Riviera.
A massive blue-grey police patrol boat that was guarding the members of the Thai royal family now rests on a mound of earth at Khao Lak, about a kilometre from the shore. The tsunami lifted it up from the sea and planted it here. The terrified crew survived, according to reports, but there was no hope for anyone caught in the path of this heavy, 18-metre (60ft) vessel.
There are said to be plans to leave the boat where it is and build a memorial around it. At the same site there are other, more transient reminders of the tragedy and its victims. Protruding from the mud, I see two Harley Davidson T-shirts, one adult-size, the other meant for a child. There is also a single, yellow diver's flipper: God knows what happened to the other one and its owner. Other items in the sad catalogue includes a solitary golf shoe, a torn wallet, a calculator from one of the seaside stalls, a punctured airbed and, most touching of all, the handle of a child's spade which will never again be clutched by tiny fingers digging happily in the sand.
Someone points out that there may still be bodies encased in the mud under my feet. Suddenly the ground seems spongy and soft where before it had been hard and sunbaked, and one feels a sense of vulnerability that wasn't there before. The Thai authorities have officially called a halt to the search for bodies, but scattered individuals are still looking for, and sometimes finding, human remains in different areas.
Ten years ago there was virtually nothing in Khao Lak but now there is ruination. This was a popular area with Scandinavians, particularly Swedes, who were among the highest on the casualty list.
The main indigenous community is at the village of Ban Nam Khem, a kind of Thai version of Killybegs, where fishing was the mainstay of the economy, with people making their living from supplying the tourist centres and hotels. The extent of the devastation in Ban Nam Khem is apparent when you see massive trawlers, 12 metres (40ft) high, that have come to rest in a villager's backyard or are looming out, like a giant cuckoo, from a nest of tiny houses in a sidestreet. This was the power of the tsunami and, nearly three months later, nobody has found the will, the determination or the resources to return the boats to their natural habitat in the harbour.
One cannot blame this community for feeling demoralised despite the sympathy of the world community and a visit last month from former US presidents Bill Clinton - who came close to tears at the sight - and George Bush snr. One fisherman alone lost eight members of his family and only two have been found. A significant number of boats were not officially registered with the Thai government and their owners are therefore not eligible for state compensation. Vessels big and small were damaged and a cheery Irish-Australian resident of the area, Graeme Killen from Perth, is helping with the task of reconstruction and repair.
"They are trying to get back in the water," says Killen of the villagers. But one of the problems is their fear of "phantoms and spirits" in a place where so many of their neighbours and loved ones perished. Another issue not highlighted in the world media is the large number of illegal Burmese immigrants who lost their lives. Killen reckons about 2,000 Burmese died. As well as that he calculates between 3,000 and 4,000 Thai nationals were killed in this area alone. The official figure for the whole country was less than 6,000 but he regards this as a serious underestimation. For example, just four nautical miles out from the harbour, there was an atoll or sandbar, known as Ko Pa, which rose about three metres from the surface. Two families lived there, up to a dozen folk in all: all were lost when the island simply disappeared.
At the small nearby town of Yan Yao, the Buddhist temple, or Wat, is the place where the bodies from this area were brought after the waters subsided. In the immediate aftermath, hundreds of corpses were laid in the open under the summer sun. Even experienced journalists covering the scene had to have counselling after what they saw. Now the dead are stored in large refrigerated containers in the temple courtyard which stand as mute witnesses to the great disaster.
Many victims remain unidentified and the authorities have placed photos of the recovered bodies on display in the hope that some relative, or other member of the public, will be able to help. Bloated and blackened by seawater, the hot sun and whatever buffeting they received in their last moments, these once-beautiful denizens of the Khao Lak beaches are now a sorrowful and tragic sight. Faces that, in life, might have stopped passers-by in their tracks are now swollen beyond recognition, tongues protruding between distended cheeks. This does not stop people scanning the pictures in the hope of recognising the blurred outline of a loved one's features or even a wedding ring or tattoo or the colour of their swimsuit. A distraught Thai woman says her mother's body has been identified but three daughters of hers are still to be found.
Making it all even harder to bear is the presence of another set of photographs, taken prior to the tsunami, which have been left by hopeful friends and relatives of the missing. Here is a stylish woman wearing pink lipstick and earrings and showing off her new hairdo; nearby are photos of two people of different ages but the same Scandinavian surname,clearly father and daughter, now united forever in death; a picture of a smiling young woman is accompanied by her dad's telephone number; here is a young Englishman with movie-star looks who must have been the lion of the local discos; an Italian couple who were probably enjoying a second honeymoon; a Swedish girl who smiles happily for the camera while a handwritten note points out that the swimsuit she wore that fateful day was a different colour.
The site commander, Col Khemmarin Hassiri of the Royal Thai Police, explains in perfect English that there are 580 bodies at this location. Full post mortems have been carried out on 330 and the work is continuing. Ireland's Ambassador to Thailand, Dan Mulhall, is on hand to see if any progress has been made in tracing two young Irish people, Lucy Coyle from Killiney, Co Dublin and Michael Murphy from Co Wexford. Det Supt John O'Driscoll has travelled from Dublin with extra data supplied by the families. All new information is keyed into the computer to see if it matches the details from the autopsy. Most identifications are made on the basis of dental records. Fingerprints are also useful, with DNA surprisingly in third place because the experts tell us that exposure to seawater degrades DNA. Between 20 and 30 bodies a day are being identified. As soon as this happens, they are released to the families.
The events of December 26th struck a body-blow to tourism in this region. Luxury hotels and heavenly landscapes are now virtually deserted. But the acting Irish consul in Phuket, Hélène Fallon Wood, who comes from from Greystones, Co Wicklow, urges Irish people to take their holidays in this part of Thailand. Statistics suggest that there won't be a repeat of the earthquake in our lifetime but there could be an economic disaster.
"Unless the tourists come back there's going to be another aftershock of the tsunami."
