How to help in Phuket
Jan. 16th, 2005 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zcat_abroadHere's the latest up-date from Dave. It's mostly about tourism stuff this time, and how you can help by having a holiday. Also, if you want to see photos of the aftermath - send me a note and I'll share my album with you. If you don't know my email, talk to someone who does, as I'm not likely to just publish it here!
It's more than 20 days since the Tsunami hit, and all the reporters and cameras (and some of the international aid) are starting to leave. Everyone now is starting to look towards the future, and the future does not look too good for Phuket at the moment. The whole economy of the island is built on tourism, and there are very few communities who do not rely on tourism in some way for their survival.
The tribal people here are probably one of the few groups who will not be affected as much by the drop in tourism numbers, although a number of the young guys have jobs (not for much longer)in the tourist industry.
There are still hundreds of people volunteering to come and help from around the world, but the biggest thing that Phuket needs is not money, clothes or rescue teams, it is tourists. This is not a case of filling the pockets of the big guys, because the big chains such as JW Marriot, Le Meridian, Club Med et al, will survive regardless of what happens on Phuket.
However, I was talking to a guy yesterday who is the managing director of a
group of exclusive hotels on one of the beaches here, and he has nearly 5,000
local Thai staff to think about. Some of the bigger hotels are promising not
to lay off staff, but already it is estimated that over 20,000 have lost their
jobs. The flow on impact to the rest of the economy of this is huge: restaurants, transport, airlines, tour guides, cleaning staff, the huge
shopping malls, gift shops are all severely affected. Each one of those 20,000 people have others who are depending on their income for survival. In some areas, like Mi Khao and Kamala, the same people who have lost their jobs also lost their houses in the Tsunami.
The best way to help Thailand recover is to come as a tourist. The local government is working now on ways to encourage those who have volunteered to
come and help to instead come and have a holiday. This will help the local
people much more effectively than donating cash. Donations and international
aid are still crucial, but more so for the countries like Indonesia and Sri
Lanka.
The problem that complicates this is that at the moment people don't want to come as a tourist, for valid reasons. It is important that when they try and market Phuket, they do it sensitively. It is also important not to have too high expectations. The beaches at Phuket are looking absolutely stunning right now. They have been swept clean by the waves, and there are almost no tourists. I have never seen it looking so good. And yet, in many places, there is a really somber spirit. People are still out digging in the sand, looking for relatives. So any tourist needs to keep in mind what has occurred. A trip to Phuket now needs to be done out of a desire to help the needs of the Thai people more than to fulfill your want of a break.
With that context in mind, I'm gonna cut and paste more of my diary in.
These are my first impressions after visiting some of these places, which is
quite an experience so please excuse what may seem to be overly dramatic
language!
13/01/05
The original plan today was to go do emails and call the parents in the morning, do media stuff and investigate environmental things in the afternoon and then to go to meet AhLin at Rawai in the evening for dinner. But as I was just getting up, AhLin called to say that the King's granddaughter was coming to visit the village at 9pm, and could I come out straight away and bring some blank CDs? So I tried to, but there were no shops open then. When I arrived at the village the army and police had gathered all the villagers together down by the waterfront and had them neatly lined up to receive bags of "relief" from the Princess, one per family. Unfortunately I got kicked out because the presence of a farang (foreigner) would look kind of weird. So I went and filmed the cavalcade whizzing past instead. Been held up a few times by cavalcades today as both the princess and Ricky Martin (of all people) are whizzing around the place "doing relief work".
So I decided that, rather than going back to the village, I would go on a
little tour of the west coast, and see AhLin later that evening. The first
beach, of course, was Yanui. I was unprepared for the scale of the devastation: it was absolute. Where all those little bungalows once stood
(and the neat little houses and that great little restaurant), was all just
piles of rubble and sand. Unbelievable. Where before the beach would have
been crowded with naked Europeans, there were now just piles of broken coral. Everything was flattened, I mean literally flattened. The one remaining skeleton would fall over if you looked at it funny. There was such an eerie silence in the place. Spooky. It was a place of death (I think around 30 people died at Yanui). One or two Thai guys were very slowly raking debris and burning piles of rubbish. One look at their faces told me they were still in shock, and not handling it well. I certainly haven't seen any of the usual Thai smiles along that west coast. I think the whole island is in shock, the same stunned look on people's faces as they try to go about their daily lives. But it's not the same. This place is a ghost town.
It was a sobering experience, and I didn't bother to stop at Nai Harn. I
also passed Le Meridian Phuket Beach Resort, because I thought it would be
okay. It turns out that it was one of the most severely affected of Phuket's
hotels. The official word is that they won't reopen till March 2006! But
unofficially it may be much longer.
The road to Kata was yet another reminder of the reality of the crisis. Almost 60% of the shops were closed, and there were almost no tourists. I could have counted on my digits the total number I saw between Nai Harn and Kata! All the hotels along the beach at Kata were the sites of feverish activity as they try to clean up ASAP. The Boathouse was quite badly affected. So was Club Med, where their buildings came close to the beach. In many places they simply have to start again. Kata beach itself looked absolutely stunning, completely pristine. All the umbrellas and rubbish have been washed away. There were maybe only 20-30 tourists on the whole beach.
Karon was interesting, but not quite as clear cut case as I thought it would be. At a number of sites, the sand dunes had been taken out since I was last here. The areas where the dunes have been removed or reduced certainly got hit much harder, but the tsunami did obviously come right over the top of dunes. The difference is that when the tsunami went over the dunes, they dissipated all of the wave's energy, and there was no obvious damage to hotels that were behind them.
Patong is something else altogether. If Yanui felt like death, Patong smells like death. Literally. In a number of places, there is a strong smell of rotting corpses. Often coming from behind large hastily erected walls so
the tourists won't see the damage. I can't be sure, but it certainly smelled
"larger" than a dog. It is most likely that most of those currently missing
were buried underneath the sand as the wave went back out. This is a completely bone chilling thought as I walk slowly along the pristine white
powder sand. Patong looks so beautiful. It is the most beautiful I have ever
seen it. Not a SINGLE umbrella or deck chair or jet ski. Unbelievable. And
yet, it feels like death. Virtually no one is talking, you don't hear any
happy sounds. All heads bow down, or if they do look at you it is with such
a blank look of despair that it is frightening. Again, almost 90% of the
people are Thai; the tourists and therefore the economy have gone. All the
waterfront buildings are trashed, virtually unrecognisible. An amazing lot
has already been done to tidy and clean up, but it still has a long way to
go. The chains like Starbucks and McDonalds are getting repaired very quickly, but the little locally owned stores are not going to simply bounce back. This place is not going to recover in three months!!
Some images stick out in my mind. The group of four or five guys slowly walking along the beach, when one suddenly points and the all start digging
feverishly in the sand. Most likely a medium trying to help them find
relatives. In the ruins of a shop, a small family group are very slowly and
meticulously combing through the rubble, perhaps looking for small family
items. Someone finds something very small and they all crowd round to see...
in slow motion. It is such a tragic, desperate sight. One of the most bone-chilling of sights is a big fat farang man sunbathing in speedos on a park bench right outside the underground Ocean department store where scores
of people drowned and their bodies were only recovered last week. I guess
there has been so much death here that people are kind of immune. Officially
the death toll on Phuket is around 500, but locals with knowledge estimate
it at double. None of the illegal immigrant workers were officially counted.
The damage trails right back up all the sois, and when you look up to see how high the water reached your heart almost stops. It must have been one of the most frightening events in human history. The trauma the survivors have gone through is crazy. Some shops along the sois(alleys) have opened again, but the
vast majority are ruined or in the process of being repaired. Local word is
that the shops that lie currently untended no longer have any owners. There
are too many like this to think about it too much. Later that afternoon, I went back to Rawai village to spend time with our friends.
All of Mening's family (extended) were there, and I had a fantastic time
hanging out with them. Everyone of them has an amazing story of survival to
tell, and they are constantly praising God for his faithfulness. I have got
many of the stories on video tape.
I then went and had dinner with AhLin and his family. Fantastic people, so
generous! I am thoroughly blessed. In the middle, Ekiang was called out
because the boat he was working on had caught fire. If they could have survived the loss of tourism, this fire will almost definitely cost Ekiang
his job.
There I also watched amateur footage of the wave hitting Rawai. It is about
the most frightening video I have ever seen, and shows the scale and terror
of tsunami better than anything else. There is one point where you see this
huge wave pass by in between the channel, and it just stops you cold. It is
honestly the same type of feeling as the bit in Signs where the alien walks
past the kids birthday party: A chilling glimpse of a menacing threat that is just completely incomprehensible and uncontrollable by humans!
That was Thursday. Yesterday (Friday), I spent most of the day at a special
seminar being held at one of the big malls here. It was about how to move
forward in the future for Phuket. It was real worthwhile for me to attend, and I got to make some great contacts and learnt a whole lot. I also met a guy there who had been at the IUCN conference in Bangkok and had met Barry and Cath (Barry Weeber works at Forest and Bird in Wellington).
The morning session was talks by Government and NGO representatives about the tsunamis and the plans for the near future. We heard from the person in charge of the Meterological society about the events that happened that morning, and why no-one was warned of a possible Tsunami. A guy from an NGO called "The Community Organisation Development Institute" talked about the desperate need of the villages such as Ban Nam Kem. He said that one of the biggest issues was actually the emotional and psychological toll. When a small village like Ban Nam Kem looses 700 of its members, everyone has lost close relatives and friends. These wounds have kept on being re-opened as scores of international journalists have gone through the camps getting people to recite again and again how they lost their Dad, wife or kids. The encouraging thing is that obviously the Thai government and these sort of NGOs are doing the best they can to address the situation. A problem that is occurring everywhere is that there are simply not enough skilled people around to fix and rebuild things properly. The government doesn't want aid groups to rush in and build houses quickly that are poorly constructed and in the wrong location and style.
It was encouraging to hear many speakers mention that it is crucial to learn lessons from what has happened and change the way things are done. There are already plans to tightening planning rules for the Beaches on Phuket, including enforcing an 80 metre setback rule from the high-tide mark. It was also noted that the sand dunes protected Karon beach, and it will be necessary to consider rebuilding sand dunes and replanting coastal vegetation along the whole coastline. I hope NZ learns from Thailand's experience, and that we don't have to wait for a tragedy like this to improve our coastal management!
Khun Anchalee, a long serving and well-known Phuket politician and currently Chief of the Provincial Government, gave a moving account of her experience on the 26th. It is amazing what they were able to achieve in really difficult circumstances, and everyone rallied round to help get water and medicine to the tens of thousands of tourists and locals who were hiding in the hills on the first night. In talking about what needed to be improved with communications, she gave the example of Meow calling her father AhLin in Koh Sireh to warn that village. She said if Meow could save hundreds of lives by a simple cellphone call, why couldn't there have been a system to warn people in Phang-nga as soon as Phuket was hit. Meow is world famous now!
The afternoon was mainly based around how to rebuild tourism, and how to really start to plan development better in Phuket. The general gist of the
afternoon is reflected in the beginning of this email. But to quickly summarize: if you want to help Thailand, come and stay for a couple of weeks.
This has been a very long email, and if you have got to the end, Congratulations! For those who have persevered to the end, I am hoping today
to put some photos up on our family's yahoo group site. I will email you
details of the site if it is successful. The photos will show the situation
much clearer than I can explain.
Today's email was mainly about the tourism side of things, but my main focus remains with the tribal people. I am doing what I can at the moment, but a lot of what needs to be done is just to be an ear to their stories and an encouragement to them. It is also good because I can bridge the gap between the Thai, the tribal people and the Americans as misunderstandings come up almost everyday.
Again, long, but interesting.
It's more than 20 days since the Tsunami hit, and all the reporters and cameras (and some of the international aid) are starting to leave. Everyone now is starting to look towards the future, and the future does not look too good for Phuket at the moment. The whole economy of the island is built on tourism, and there are very few communities who do not rely on tourism in some way for their survival.
The tribal people here are probably one of the few groups who will not be affected as much by the drop in tourism numbers, although a number of the young guys have jobs (not for much longer)in the tourist industry.
There are still hundreds of people volunteering to come and help from around the world, but the biggest thing that Phuket needs is not money, clothes or rescue teams, it is tourists. This is not a case of filling the pockets of the big guys, because the big chains such as JW Marriot, Le Meridian, Club Med et al, will survive regardless of what happens on Phuket.
However, I was talking to a guy yesterday who is the managing director of a
group of exclusive hotels on one of the beaches here, and he has nearly 5,000
local Thai staff to think about. Some of the bigger hotels are promising not
to lay off staff, but already it is estimated that over 20,000 have lost their
jobs. The flow on impact to the rest of the economy of this is huge: restaurants, transport, airlines, tour guides, cleaning staff, the huge
shopping malls, gift shops are all severely affected. Each one of those 20,000 people have others who are depending on their income for survival. In some areas, like Mi Khao and Kamala, the same people who have lost their jobs also lost their houses in the Tsunami.
The best way to help Thailand recover is to come as a tourist. The local government is working now on ways to encourage those who have volunteered to
come and help to instead come and have a holiday. This will help the local
people much more effectively than donating cash. Donations and international
aid are still crucial, but more so for the countries like Indonesia and Sri
Lanka.
The problem that complicates this is that at the moment people don't want to come as a tourist, for valid reasons. It is important that when they try and market Phuket, they do it sensitively. It is also important not to have too high expectations. The beaches at Phuket are looking absolutely stunning right now. They have been swept clean by the waves, and there are almost no tourists. I have never seen it looking so good. And yet, in many places, there is a really somber spirit. People are still out digging in the sand, looking for relatives. So any tourist needs to keep in mind what has occurred. A trip to Phuket now needs to be done out of a desire to help the needs of the Thai people more than to fulfill your want of a break.
With that context in mind, I'm gonna cut and paste more of my diary in.
These are my first impressions after visiting some of these places, which is
quite an experience so please excuse what may seem to be overly dramatic
language!
13/01/05
The original plan today was to go do emails and call the parents in the morning, do media stuff and investigate environmental things in the afternoon and then to go to meet AhLin at Rawai in the evening for dinner. But as I was just getting up, AhLin called to say that the King's granddaughter was coming to visit the village at 9pm, and could I come out straight away and bring some blank CDs? So I tried to, but there were no shops open then. When I arrived at the village the army and police had gathered all the villagers together down by the waterfront and had them neatly lined up to receive bags of "relief" from the Princess, one per family. Unfortunately I got kicked out because the presence of a farang (foreigner) would look kind of weird. So I went and filmed the cavalcade whizzing past instead. Been held up a few times by cavalcades today as both the princess and Ricky Martin (of all people) are whizzing around the place "doing relief work".
So I decided that, rather than going back to the village, I would go on a
little tour of the west coast, and see AhLin later that evening. The first
beach, of course, was Yanui. I was unprepared for the scale of the devastation: it was absolute. Where all those little bungalows once stood
(and the neat little houses and that great little restaurant), was all just
piles of rubble and sand. Unbelievable. Where before the beach would have
been crowded with naked Europeans, there were now just piles of broken coral. Everything was flattened, I mean literally flattened. The one remaining skeleton would fall over if you looked at it funny. There was such an eerie silence in the place. Spooky. It was a place of death (I think around 30 people died at Yanui). One or two Thai guys were very slowly raking debris and burning piles of rubbish. One look at their faces told me they were still in shock, and not handling it well. I certainly haven't seen any of the usual Thai smiles along that west coast. I think the whole island is in shock, the same stunned look on people's faces as they try to go about their daily lives. But it's not the same. This place is a ghost town.
It was a sobering experience, and I didn't bother to stop at Nai Harn. I
also passed Le Meridian Phuket Beach Resort, because I thought it would be
okay. It turns out that it was one of the most severely affected of Phuket's
hotels. The official word is that they won't reopen till March 2006! But
unofficially it may be much longer.
The road to Kata was yet another reminder of the reality of the crisis. Almost 60% of the shops were closed, and there were almost no tourists. I could have counted on my digits the total number I saw between Nai Harn and Kata! All the hotels along the beach at Kata were the sites of feverish activity as they try to clean up ASAP. The Boathouse was quite badly affected. So was Club Med, where their buildings came close to the beach. In many places they simply have to start again. Kata beach itself looked absolutely stunning, completely pristine. All the umbrellas and rubbish have been washed away. There were maybe only 20-30 tourists on the whole beach.
Karon was interesting, but not quite as clear cut case as I thought it would be. At a number of sites, the sand dunes had been taken out since I was last here. The areas where the dunes have been removed or reduced certainly got hit much harder, but the tsunami did obviously come right over the top of dunes. The difference is that when the tsunami went over the dunes, they dissipated all of the wave's energy, and there was no obvious damage to hotels that were behind them.
Patong is something else altogether. If Yanui felt like death, Patong smells like death. Literally. In a number of places, there is a strong smell of rotting corpses. Often coming from behind large hastily erected walls so
the tourists won't see the damage. I can't be sure, but it certainly smelled
"larger" than a dog. It is most likely that most of those currently missing
were buried underneath the sand as the wave went back out. This is a completely bone chilling thought as I walk slowly along the pristine white
powder sand. Patong looks so beautiful. It is the most beautiful I have ever
seen it. Not a SINGLE umbrella or deck chair or jet ski. Unbelievable. And
yet, it feels like death. Virtually no one is talking, you don't hear any
happy sounds. All heads bow down, or if they do look at you it is with such
a blank look of despair that it is frightening. Again, almost 90% of the
people are Thai; the tourists and therefore the economy have gone. All the
waterfront buildings are trashed, virtually unrecognisible. An amazing lot
has already been done to tidy and clean up, but it still has a long way to
go. The chains like Starbucks and McDonalds are getting repaired very quickly, but the little locally owned stores are not going to simply bounce back. This place is not going to recover in three months!!
Some images stick out in my mind. The group of four or five guys slowly walking along the beach, when one suddenly points and the all start digging
feverishly in the sand. Most likely a medium trying to help them find
relatives. In the ruins of a shop, a small family group are very slowly and
meticulously combing through the rubble, perhaps looking for small family
items. Someone finds something very small and they all crowd round to see...
in slow motion. It is such a tragic, desperate sight. One of the most bone-chilling of sights is a big fat farang man sunbathing in speedos on a park bench right outside the underground Ocean department store where scores
of people drowned and their bodies were only recovered last week. I guess
there has been so much death here that people are kind of immune. Officially
the death toll on Phuket is around 500, but locals with knowledge estimate
it at double. None of the illegal immigrant workers were officially counted.
The damage trails right back up all the sois, and when you look up to see how high the water reached your heart almost stops. It must have been one of the most frightening events in human history. The trauma the survivors have gone through is crazy. Some shops along the sois(alleys) have opened again, but the
vast majority are ruined or in the process of being repaired. Local word is
that the shops that lie currently untended no longer have any owners. There
are too many like this to think about it too much. Later that afternoon, I went back to Rawai village to spend time with our friends.
All of Mening's family (extended) were there, and I had a fantastic time
hanging out with them. Everyone of them has an amazing story of survival to
tell, and they are constantly praising God for his faithfulness. I have got
many of the stories on video tape.
I then went and had dinner with AhLin and his family. Fantastic people, so
generous! I am thoroughly blessed. In the middle, Ekiang was called out
because the boat he was working on had caught fire. If they could have survived the loss of tourism, this fire will almost definitely cost Ekiang
his job.
There I also watched amateur footage of the wave hitting Rawai. It is about
the most frightening video I have ever seen, and shows the scale and terror
of tsunami better than anything else. There is one point where you see this
huge wave pass by in between the channel, and it just stops you cold. It is
honestly the same type of feeling as the bit in Signs where the alien walks
past the kids birthday party: A chilling glimpse of a menacing threat that is just completely incomprehensible and uncontrollable by humans!
That was Thursday. Yesterday (Friday), I spent most of the day at a special
seminar being held at one of the big malls here. It was about how to move
forward in the future for Phuket. It was real worthwhile for me to attend, and I got to make some great contacts and learnt a whole lot. I also met a guy there who had been at the IUCN conference in Bangkok and had met Barry and Cath (Barry Weeber works at Forest and Bird in Wellington).
The morning session was talks by Government and NGO representatives about the tsunamis and the plans for the near future. We heard from the person in charge of the Meterological society about the events that happened that morning, and why no-one was warned of a possible Tsunami. A guy from an NGO called "The Community Organisation Development Institute" talked about the desperate need of the villages such as Ban Nam Kem. He said that one of the biggest issues was actually the emotional and psychological toll. When a small village like Ban Nam Kem looses 700 of its members, everyone has lost close relatives and friends. These wounds have kept on being re-opened as scores of international journalists have gone through the camps getting people to recite again and again how they lost their Dad, wife or kids. The encouraging thing is that obviously the Thai government and these sort of NGOs are doing the best they can to address the situation. A problem that is occurring everywhere is that there are simply not enough skilled people around to fix and rebuild things properly. The government doesn't want aid groups to rush in and build houses quickly that are poorly constructed and in the wrong location and style.
It was encouraging to hear many speakers mention that it is crucial to learn lessons from what has happened and change the way things are done. There are already plans to tightening planning rules for the Beaches on Phuket, including enforcing an 80 metre setback rule from the high-tide mark. It was also noted that the sand dunes protected Karon beach, and it will be necessary to consider rebuilding sand dunes and replanting coastal vegetation along the whole coastline. I hope NZ learns from Thailand's experience, and that we don't have to wait for a tragedy like this to improve our coastal management!
Khun Anchalee, a long serving and well-known Phuket politician and currently Chief of the Provincial Government, gave a moving account of her experience on the 26th. It is amazing what they were able to achieve in really difficult circumstances, and everyone rallied round to help get water and medicine to the tens of thousands of tourists and locals who were hiding in the hills on the first night. In talking about what needed to be improved with communications, she gave the example of Meow calling her father AhLin in Koh Sireh to warn that village. She said if Meow could save hundreds of lives by a simple cellphone call, why couldn't there have been a system to warn people in Phang-nga as soon as Phuket was hit. Meow is world famous now!
The afternoon was mainly based around how to rebuild tourism, and how to really start to plan development better in Phuket. The general gist of the
afternoon is reflected in the beginning of this email. But to quickly summarize: if you want to help Thailand, come and stay for a couple of weeks.
This has been a very long email, and if you have got to the end, Congratulations! For those who have persevered to the end, I am hoping today
to put some photos up on our family's yahoo group site. I will email you
details of the site if it is successful. The photos will show the situation
much clearer than I can explain.
Today's email was mainly about the tourism side of things, but my main focus remains with the tribal people. I am doing what I can at the moment, but a lot of what needs to be done is just to be an ear to their stories and an encouragement to them. It is also good because I can bridge the gap between the Thai, the tribal people and the Americans as misunderstandings come up almost everyday.
Again, long, but interesting.