I had already booked my ticket to Thailand when the news of the huge Tsunami hit. I had lived and worked in Thailand for 4 years in the 1970s. I liked it very much but had not been back for a while. Now I was going because I had had a an offer of a job from a University in Bangkok. I was in Mozambique, at the time, wheree I worked for the National University but was thinking of changing. I had visited Phuket once before and had done a quick day-trip to Koh Phi Phi. It was a hippy destination: sandy paths, wooden huts and chalets – one three-storey, concrete hotel. That was all I knew of the island. I had, however, read where the Governor of the povince was asking visitors ro come back. I decided to visit. It was only ten days after that horrible tragedy.
I took the boat from Phuket. The captain told me that, that monring he had left for Phi Phi as usual but was told over his radio to stop and turn around as he was approaching the bay. He said that he could already see bodies floating in the water.
The man I met the evening I arrived told me, “Here you smell death everywhere.” He wasn’t exaggerating. Almost two weeks had passed since the tsunami, yet the atmosphere in the narrow streets of Ton Sai still carried something in the air of the horrors that had happened.
I walked slowly through the village the next morning. There were few people around. Debris lay everywhere: twisted metal, splintered walls, mattresses drying in the sun. But it wasn’t the wreckage that held me. It was the small, personal things the water had scattered — the things that had belonged to someone only hours before the wave hit.
A page from the Cabana Hotel’s Food and Beverage Department lay at my feet. A daily inspection form: “Cleanliness of Body,” “Teeth and Mouth,” “Posture,” “Shave,” “Name Badge.” Thirteen boxes ticked “Good.” Only “Make Up” left blank: male kitchen staff, I presumed. It was dated the 26th of December. Signed by the employee and the manager. How long after signing it did the wave come? Minutes? An hour? He would have been on the ground floor. Did he survive? Did any of them on the ground floorsurvive? Probably not !
Phi Phi’s beauty helped to betray it. The island has two bays, only three hundred metres apart, each with its own beach. The western bay faced the open ocean; the eastern bay opened towards the island Koh Phi Phi Leh (Small). The wave – over 6m high – squeezed through the narrow western inlet, rose in the shallows, gathered itself, and tore through the village before rushing out the other side but not before meeting a smaller wave -3m high -coming from the other side. The village was devastated.
On that early morning after Christmas Day, most the flimsy prefab rooms — built for sleeping in, not living in— simply collapsed. People had little or no warning. Some who saw it coming, escaped by clambering up the limestone cliffs. More than 3000 didn’t make it.
People were picking through the debris, turning over clothes, utensils, toys. They ignored the dozens of computer screens outside the ruined internet cafés. They were looking for things they could use. Many wore mouth masks, though the smell was faint now.
The most poignant objects were the smallest: a set of colouring pencils spilled across a hut floor; a shower cap still in its plastic holder; a Marion Keyes novel; a video with Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer on the cover; chopsticks; a child’s bathing suit top with tiny silver stars and a tinsel heart. I picked up a CD — the rapper Nas, still wrapped — and for a moment thought of keeping it as a souvenir. Then I put it back. It felt wrong.
Divers from Bangkok were working in the bay, attaching ropes to submerged objects. A small crane on the jetty hauled up a trolley cart used in the village’s narrow lanes. Snagged in its mesh was a cotton shoulder bag. One of the young divers emptied the contents onto the pier: a diving mask, snorkel, phone, credit card, purse with a little money, lipstick, nail polish remover. “Phuying, phuying,” several onlookers murmured — a girl. The diver joked that the phone was “cheap, cheap,” but when he handed the items to the dive master, the phone and purse had disappeared.
I watched as a crane on a boat hoisted from the water what Thais call a longtail boat. I lifted it almost clear of the water, the ropes snapped and it ploppd back nto the water. It had a Thai flag wrapped around its prow and was probably used to bring visitors to and from Koh Phi Phi Lek.
That evening I ate at a restaurant on the beach, the table legs almost touching the water. The moon was rising over the bay, softening the jagged outline of Phi Phi Leh. There was fish on the menu but the waitress apologised: “ไม่มีปลา” ‘ may mii plaa’ There is no fish, she said. She pointed out across the water. I understood. There were still bodies in the bay. More than two thousand people were unaccounted for and would remain so. The fish were were there too. Her meaning was clear. “And the ghosts, there are ghosts (”มีผีอยู่) – the word in Thai for ghosts sounds the same as the word for the island – she added quietly. People saw them at night. They were unquiet spirits (restless), she explained, because they never had proper religious rites.
I contemplated the bay. Wisps of vapour drifted across the moonlit water. Of course there were unquiet spirits; most of them were far away from home: never to go home, never even to be found.
