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Here and gone, just like that

The placid splendor of this south Asia coast belies the death and destruction wrought by the tsunami's fleeting but brutal waves.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published January 11, 2005

Online journal: Jan. 11, 2005

As Times photographer Kathleen Flynn and I drive along picture-postcard beaches of Thailand's west coast, it is almost impossible to imagine the tsunami that hit here the day after Christmas. Now, the waters of the Andaman Sea are as smooth and glistening as the finest Thai silk.

Everyone we talk to says the same - within minutes after the last, monstrous wave vented its fury, the water returned to its calm, clear state. All my life, I have had what psychologists say is a familiar anxiety dream at times of stress - the ocean suddenly rising to preternatural heights. But now that I am here, where a tsunami hit, I can barely imagine what it must have been like to see the ocean coming relentlessly toward me.

The devastation is proof this is no dream. In Khao Lak, north of where we are staying on Phuket Island, the waves must have reached unbelievable heights. A large police patrol boat sits on high ground more than a mile inland, swept there by the waves. On the morning of Dec. 26, it was one of the vessels guarding the coast as the autistic 21-year-old grandson of the king of Thailand jet-skiied nearby. He was killed. Now, we hear, the government plans to leave the cruiser there and turn the area into a national monument.

A few miles away, workers are draining an abandoned tin-mining lake. A Bangkok-Phuket passenger bus was traveling along the highway when the waves dumped it in the lake. Forty passengers reportedly drowned; the search for bodies continues.

A jarring sight: So many people have come to watch that an ice cream vendor is doing a brisk business by lakeside, selling Nestle creamsicles to the legions of gawkers.

Most of the luxury resorts at Khao Lak are gone, along with hundreds of Swedes, Norwegians and other tourists who went to the beach that fine, hot morning with no idea this would be their last. At one place, a huge, overturned truck sits in what used to be the lobby; elsewhere, an American Standard toilet bowl is all that is left of a luxury room.

On the way here, we flew Thai International Airways from London. I thumbed through the in-flight magazine, obviously published before Dec. 26, and saw an item about a new restaurant at the JW Marriott hotel in Bangkok.

The restaurant's name is Tsunami - "a large destructive wave," the article helpfully explained.

[Last modified January 12, 2005, 12:05:00]