Long wait for life to resume

Ning Nong Pimpan came to look for a friend missing at the Ban Khao Lak resort, but all she found was destruction. Picture / Brett Phibbs

PHUKET, Thailand - Ning Nong Pimpan is chatting about the handbag she bought at the markets as she drives up the coast.

Thailand is famous for bargains, but this bag was a great one. She paid 100 baht ($3.65) for it, an imitation Louis Vuitton. Normally, you would pay 2000 or 3000 ($70 to $110), she says.

The market-stall holders selling cut-price T-shirts, fake Rolexes and bags are trying to keep going after the tsunami flattened the shops and cafes at Patong Beach where she lives.

Many customers were killed and injured and many fled for home.

Ning Nong bought the bag even though business is bad for her, too. She runs cabaret shows and a bar but is telling staff to go on a month's holiday. There are too many staff for so few customers.

Suddenly, she breaks off and puts her hand to her heart. "Oh my God," she says. "Oh, no, no, no."

We have arrived at Khao Lak. Ning Nong has come to look for a friend missing after the tsunami. She has constantly tried to telephone but could not get through. She does not want to think he is dead but now she has no option.

He owned a small hotel at the Khao Lak resort area and now, in Ning Nong's words, the whole area has "disappeared. It gone".

She looks around, stunned. This stretch of coast was so severely hit there are large areas of nothing. In between the wasteland there are floors with no walls, the remnants of scores of hotels pushed into piles by diggers.

It has taken Ning Nong's breath away. It isn't that she did not know what it might be like. After all, she lives at Patong Beach and has seen the destruction there but most of her town still operates. Not so Khao Lak.

After losing two friends at Patong Beach and four at Phi Phi Island where they had a shop, this further likely death is another big blow.

"He was lovely," she says. "His family was here, too."

She walks ahead, a tiny, forlorn figure picking her way through the rubble and holes in the ground exposing sewage. She knew the place well.

She honeymooned here, in her missing friend's hotel on the beach front. It was romantic and tranquil, with picture postcard views of the ocean and beautiful gardens. Now only the ocean remains, and the hotel's foundation rests drunkenly on the earth, its floorboards still intact.

She can say nothing. She rubs her eyes and keeps wandering past what was a restaurant, a swimming pool.

A dog runs up and she pats and talks gently to it. She has four dogs at Patong Beach and says they barked and the chickens clucked, all clearly agitated before the tsunami struck.

"He's so skinny," she says. A workman clearing rubble gives it a drink of water.

"My friend, I hope he run," she says. "He big and strong. He same me, 36, 37. I think he can run," she says in forlorn hope.

But he would have tried to help others, especially his family. If he were alive he would have made contact by now.

She stops to talk to a Thai man, also wandering through the devastation. His nephew worked at a hotel kitchen and he is missing, the only son of the family. This man accepts he is dead but comes every day to look for his body. Another man tells how he found the body of a tourist, his arms still wrapped around his dead child.

Back in the car journeying north again, Ning Nong stops to ask a policeman directions to Ban Nan Khem, a destroyed fishing village. She winds the window down to speak to him and an awful smell wafts in. The policeman is directing traffic past a temple housing the dead.

There are mainly Thai bodies here, with the European tourists further north at Tekuapa.

Ning Nong winds up the window fast and shudders. Minutes later she is still holding her nose.

Ban Nan Khem is another wasteland. Of about 3000 houses, only a handful remain. Seven children gather outside the few rooms remaining in one house. They should be at school but there is no longer a school.

Some have opened again but these children are told to keep away because there may still be bodies.

A man walks up and is happy to talk. He is smiling and generous, bringing bottled water without being asked, even though it is not his house - his is gone - and these people have so little.

Aid has been pouring in. They have food, water and clothing but no money and no way of making a living. Already poor, now they are destitute.

This man, Mi Meakhathalea, lost a brother and an uncle and his wife is missing. He estimates more than half the villagers died but does not know numbers, maybe 1000 or more. He tells how some people died or were badly hurt from the tin roofs flying off. His fishing boat was destroyed, friends and family killed, his life is in tatters.

"He say in first day everything is gone, everyone is gone, he assumed that," Ning Nong translates. "He wants to kill his self, he wants to go in the water and kill his self."

There were no tourists here, she says. The victims were all Thai. The village existed on fishing and most of the fishermen are dead.

Almost two weeks later Mi Meakhathalea does not know what to do. He cannot fish and most of the boats are unsalvageable.

But help is arriving. The Government has been good, he says, and has told him it will buy new boats. But he does not know when. He does not know when he will be fishing again. Maybe a year, he shrugs. In the meantime, he has nothing to do.

"He say he has no job, no anything. He try find some stuff to sell, can sell something to buy something," says Ning Nong.

"But everything very hard. No job, no house. He say very big what happened but he say governor helped very much, have some food, have some cooking. But very hard about money."

The Thai Government recognises people's desperate need to get back on their own feet. The Cabinet has said it will put up 1000 temporary housing units and one million baht is to go to fishermen such as Mi.

There is also 171 million baht ($6.248 million) for those who lost jobs.

The Army is to build the housing. Soldiers are already camped out in tents in the area and it is said the units may be up within two weeks.

Just under 3500 fishing boats were damaged in the disaster. Fishermen will get 95,000 baht ($3470) for a big boat, says the Bangkok Post, 30,000 baht ($1096) for smaller ones and those who caught fish in floating baskets will get 12,000 ($438) each.

Psychologists, too, are scheduled to visit Ban Nan Khem within the week.

But Mi is worried that even when he is back fishing it will be hard to make a living. The market for fish has collapsed. People don't want to eat it because so many bodies were washed out to sea.

Ning Nong says everything will be rebuilt, from the fishing village to the hotels. But it could take from five to 10 years to get back to normal.

What they need now are the tourists to come back. "I need that very much."

She has 40 staff. Only 14 remain and some have fled to their homes inland, fearing another wave. Ning Nong understands this and says she feels lucky to be alive.

"I go to run on beach but that day I sleep in. In shock nearly two days. Can't eat, can't sleep. Many people say same. Bad. Very, very bad. People worry about aftershocks, hide in hills."

She carried her baby son up the hills for a while.

She hangs a Buddha in her car for good luck and believes in reincarnation. But Buddha, she says, can't help everybody.

"I think this one not a good life, not a bad life. It can happen everywhere."

She pauses and says again she has been very lucky. Ning Nong's bar is still open. She does not want to lay people off and hopes she will not have to.

The catastrophe has been huge but most of Thailand has not been affected. There is no disease. Even at the fishing village with all its destruction there is no sign of sickness.

The Government here, too, is trying to help. There is talk of promotional trips and cut-price deals to lure people once again to the beautiful beaches.

Even New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister, Phil Goff, says it is safe to come here and that just a tiny part of Thailand was damaged.

On a flying visit to have a look, he suggested New Zealanders should respect the worst hit areas and keep away from them.

The Bangkok Post is looking ahead. In an editorial it suggests that, considering the tsunami-damaged seabed and previous visitor impacts on the fragile coastline, the redevelopment of tourism should provide a sustained, environmentally friendly industry.