Tsunami anniversary: A wave of hope

Tsunami evacuation route signs have gone up to show the way to higher ground, but they can be tricky to follow. A recent siren early warning test was largely ignored. Picture / Brett Phibbs.

It's another stunning day in paradise. The emerald sea is sparkling, long-tail boats line the shore and tourists sunbathe topless on the beach, bodies glistening with sweat from the heat.

But watching over this holiday scene from the fourth floor of the Phi Phi Hotel, you can't help but scan the horizon.

Stare as you might, no big waves are racing in today, unlike this time last year.

On that Boxing Day morning paradise was lost. Now it is returning.

But this small dot of heaven in the middle of the Andaman Sea, southern Thailand, is scarred.

The tsunami was brutal. As well as the tourists, the view below takes in the stunted remains of the once-towering coconut palms that were snapped off at 2m by walls of water.

There is a large empty space in the middle of the island that was once packed with buildings. You can see from one side to the other now, which was impossible before.

Locals say 70 per cent of the buildings on Phi Phi Island, a tourist mecca, were wiped out and that at least 2000 lives - half the population - were lost.

The broken coconut palms are graphic reminders of the awesome force of nature.

Coconut palms are hardy. Around Thailand many palms survived and people who climbed and clung to them lived to tell of miraculous escapes.

Here, in the central flat strip of the island where waves from opposite bays met and crashed, they stood no chance.

It's amazing that anything survived. But some structures did, such as the rock-solid concrete Phi Phi Hotel. It is a landmark above the ruins. It is open for business, welcoming, shiny and clean. A year ago, abandoned, it was like a ghost hotel.

We had arrived a few days after the tsunami and walked in disbelief around the island.

It looked like a bombed-out war zone. A lot of people were about but they were trudging silently, heads down, not making eye contact. There was grim work to be done. They pulled bodies from rubble and from the sea and put them into bodybags.

Some images remain etched in the mind. One is the sight of baggage trolleys carrying not bags, but bodies.

They wheeled by endlessly. The dead were piled at the pier for boats to take them to a mainland morgue. Then the trolleys had been wheeled back for more.


It is strange to see those same trolleys now carrying the bags of happy tourists once more. Eerie, too, is the sight of tourists sunbathing and swimming where so many died, so suddenly, while relaxing on the beach just like these people.

Phi Phi Hotel has prime views of both sides of the flat strip that is once again becoming the island's tourist hub.

It looks out over Tonsai Bay on one side and Lohdalum Bay on the other and over part of the central strip of shops, markets and restaurants.

Concrete structures survived here too but the relentless waves had jammed them tight with debris. From them had come the distinctive, unforgettable smell of death from the bodies still trapped inside.

The shops have been cleaned and repainted and the sense of dazed shellshock is gone. Tourists again buy trinkets and they eat at new restaurants.

Phi Phi Hotel breathes with life again, erasing any sign of ghosts. But it is hard to shake the memory of what it was like a year ago.

The bottom two floors were filled with rubble, the ground floor restaurant was a mess. And the swimming pool - now filled with clear blue water - was brown and stagnant.

The bottom floor was strewn with belongings - clothes, toothpaste, hairbrushes, shoes - evidence of people, but there were no people.

It was weird climbing to the upper floors. Untouched by the water but abandoned, they had made a stark contrast - in rooms left with doors open in the hurry to leave ... suitcases, wet towels, jandals ready to be stepped into.

The fourth-floor corridor had echoed with emptiness all the way down to a small deck overlooking both bays.

On the deck, people had put mattresses out for the injured, bloodied bandages were discarded on the ground. Survivors hunkered down for the long wait for help.

But now music and laughter are in the air and the sounds of hammering and sawing echo as rebuilding goes on.

In the strip of shops below a young European woman sits outside a dive shop. Her name is Lara. She is Italian but lives on the island and was here during the tsunami. Lara is alive because she was at her bungalow on higher ground and not at work at 10.30am on Boxing Day.

The first six months were harsh. She slept with the lights on for a long time and has checked out all the high places on the island in case another tsunami comes.


Lara remembers a baggage trolley. It had carried the body of a friend - she had recognised the hair.

"You don't know whether to be grateful to be alive or angry to have lost so many friends," she says.

She finds it comforting - sitting where water had powered through on Boxing Day - that a siren warning system is now in place.

She was astonished that tourists ignored it a few days ago when it was tested. "They don't have any idea what it looked like here."

Lara does not like walking along Lohdalum Bay any more. The water is shallower this side and the bay more contained. The waves had been higher and even more forceful than at Tonsai Bay and more people died.

Lara doesn't believe in ghosts but says "it's kind of spooky". She won't go there at night.

Her eyes brim with tears. Imagine listening to waves crashing on a beach, she says, then amplify it 1000 times.

Then imagine the shouting and screaming of a sports stadium, but amplify it 1000 times. Then imagine nothing but silence.

Many of the tourists now enjoying themselves have little idea of the scale of what happened here.

Two English girls having breakfast at the refurbished restaurant at Phi Phi Hotel tuck in to the buffet. They are on a trip around Thailand and made a decision to buy all their trinkets on Phi Phi to help the locals. They have been swimming and diving.

"Didn't about 11 people die?" asks one. Her mouth drops when told that 2000 died.


Throughout the island tsunami evacuation signs are nailed on palms, big arrows pointing to higher ground.

These give some reassurance to the tourists. But if you try to follow them, they are confusing. One set of signs did lead to higher ground, but access had been blocked by a restaurant courtyard.

Along Lohdalum Bay, not far from one sign, a Thai man stands under a makeshift canopy waiting for people to take a trip in his long-tail boat.

Like many islanders, he's had a tough year. In halting English he tells how he ran to get his wife before running for their lives to reach the hills.

They made it. But his house was destroyed, as were those of all his neighbours.

He is still waiting for the Government to give the go-ahead to rebuild, even though he has lived there for 24 years.

There is bitterness here among some of the islanders, who accuse the Government of attempting to take their land. A town plan has been talked of but so far there's no sign of it.

And there are rumours that houses will be restricted on big tracts of tsunami-damaged land in favour of five-star resorts.

That leaves a cloud of uncertainty for the local people whose livelihoods are here. They say that aside from the initial clean-up, the Government has not helped. Instead, they relied on the volunteers who poured in to help.

In the months after the tsunami a steady stream arrived, many of them backpackers who wanted to help the people on an island which many had holidayed on and grown to love.

At one time there were 400 volunteers. They have mostly gone, but a core group remains.

One volunteer diver from Canada says they are still needed.

He and others still dive to clean the reefs and will be doing so for a long time.

Every time the sediment shifts, lumps of concrete, metal and debris emerge.

Eve Thiprakasa wears a T-shirt which says: Phi Phi, Rising Above the Waves. The 21-year-old works for the voluntary organisation Hi Phi Phi, Hi standing for Help International, one of several groups formed after the tsunami.

Hi Phi Phi was set up early on by a man from Holland. He has gone home, but the group remains.

Thiprakasa is a local who is paid by Hi Phi Phi to organise the volunteers who still come.

At the headquarters, sheets of papers calling for volunteers for rebuilding and clearing work are still pinned up but few names have been put down.

Thiprakasa was not on the island during the tsunami. He was well out to sea on a long-tail boat.

He noticed a strong current, which was not too unusual, but then realised something was wrong when small motorboats started racing away from the island.

Thiprakasa rattles off the names of resorts that are now gone - hundreds and hundreds of rooms.

Most people estimate that 2000 people died. But others, including Thiprakasa, think as many as 3000 may have died.

The wait for sufficient action has been too long, he says.

The Government has said there will be no building closer than 30m from the shore, but landowners are objecting.

"If the people, they not rebuilding, they have to use money, they have to work, their children must go to school, they have to eat.

"Local people, they wait for a new plan for a long, long time, you know. Now is almost one year."

Some say they cannot wait any longer and are rebuilding anyway.

Thiprakasa says that initially the Government spent 20 million baht ($725,000) for contractors to clean up the island.

About 7000 tonnes of rubbish and broken buildings were shipped away on barges.

It has gone into a landfill on the mainland and some people say bodies, or body parts, will be among it, and also possible means of identification such as credit cards, passports and wallets.

Thiprakasa speaks with gratitude of the volunteers, among them New Zealanders, who helped repair his island, and those who are still doing so. "The foreigner, they come, little at first, then more and more.

They want to see what happen here, they come for about five day, then about three day they help."

Some locals still live in Krabi in temporary homes but more and more are returning, Thiprakasa says. It has been a very hard time.

"Some they lost their house, they lost their job, their family, their children."

Thiprakasa says he has never seen a ghost, but some people say they hear noises, see things.

"But I never hear, never see anything."

At the far end of Lohdalum Bay, past the sunbathers, a small area of greenery marks the site of a memorial garden for tsunami victims.

A long list of names is going up on a plaque. Families of victims will gather here for Boxing Day commemorations.

Above the garden a resort is set into the hills. From there no damage can be seen and life is going on as normal.

An episode of Friends is playing on the television in the bar, music pumps out and people laze around the pool drinking beer, laughing, chatting.

A Thai man hands out leaflets for an all-night dance party. Further along, a group of Thai men play soccer on the sand and two Italian men in skimpy togs bat a ball around.

Behind them, a little inland, a digger works into the night laying foundations for bungalows.

It's a strange mix, but you get used to it. As the locals say, life goes on. And tourists will be tourists.