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Surviving brings relief, and guilt

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published January 23, 2005

PHUKET, Thailand - Life on this island has its heart-stopping moments.

Finding a 10-foot cobra in the front yard. Dodging manic motorcyclists on the curvy mountain roads. Realizing a tsunami is headed for your beachfront home.

"You can't accept that this isn't a movie set," says Ken Taylor, walking past once-familiar shops and restaurants that look as if a giant bulldozer has plowed through them.

Less than two years ago, Taylor and his wife, Veronica, moved here from the Tampa Bay area, where he managed the Davis Island Yacht Club and she owned the Suitor, a women's clothing store in downtown St. Petersburg.

Veronica's links to Thailand go back decades, and they have given the Taylors an unusual perspective on one of the world's greatest natural disasters.

While she attended high school in Minnesota in the late '60s, Veronica's family hosted a teenager from Bangkok. Noi, as he was nicknamed, belonged to a prominent Thai clan: His mother was a former Miss Siam, his father the country's ambassador to Germany and his sister now is ambassador to Australia.

In the year and a half he lived in America, Noi and Veronica became like brother and sister. She visited Thailand many times - first for his father's funeral and Buddhist cremation ceremony, later to volunteer in camps for Laotian and Cambodian refugees.

It wasn't all hard work. "Brother Noi," by then a consultant, was dating a member of the Thai royal family. On weekends Veronica left the refugee camps for Bangkok, where she stayed and partied in the king's boathouse.

"Some boathouse," Veronica says with her hearty laugh. "It was a five-story mansion."

Back home in St. Petersburg, she and Ken became surrogate parents to Noi's relatives so they - just as he had done - could experience life in America while growing up. Noi's daughter graduated from Admiral Farragut. A niece went to Tampa Prep.

In 2003, the Taylors moved to Thailand after Veronica accepted a management job with the nation's electric company. Like thousands of other foreigners who have made Thailand their home, they were drawn by the friendliness of the people, the low cost of health care and the affordability of prime real estate.

The Taylors rented a two-story house on Rawai Beach on Phuket's southeastern coast. From their back porch they can look across the sea to Phi Phi Island, a popular dive spot, and Maiton, an island owned by Brother Noi's family. They are so close to the water that high tide comes within feet of the house.

Early on the morning of Dec. 26, Ken was making tea when the sliding glass doors rattled violently. He assumed it was an earthquake in nearby Burma, and thought little more about it.

A short time later, the Taylors and Veronica's 84-year-old mother, Dawn, left the house for a trip to Malaysia, where they planned to spend New Year's Eve. When they came to the bridges linking Phuket to the mainland, the northbound span had been closed and traffic was being diverted onto the newer, higher southbound bridge.

Maybe there's been an accident, Ken thought. Then he noticed Muslims praying in the truck ahead. Or perhaps a terror attack.

The phone lines were jammed, but a Thai friend finally reached the Taylors with news of the tsunami. But no vehicles were allowed back onto Phuket; instead the Taylors met up with friends at a crowded restaurant where all eyes were trained on a TV and the first shocking pictures.

"An excited Swedish man claimed that everything along Chalong Circle on Phuket was wiped out," Ken says. "That would have included our house."

It was 6 p.m. before the Taylors reached home. Waves had splashed the downstairs bedroom windows and shoved a heavy, granite-topped table to within an inch of the sliding glass door.

That is the table at which Veronica's mother spends much of her time, enjoying the view of the usually tranquil sea. Had she not decided to make the trip to Malaysia, she might have been crushed to death, Veronica says, her eyes moistening at the thought.

The Taylors' porch was covered with sand, and the yard littered with wrecked boats and 30 feet of the old Chalong Pier. Amazingly, no water got in the house; the Taylors think Lon Island, directly ahead of them, blocked the full force of the tsunami.

Not so fortunate were those on Phi Phi Island, where hundreds died. Or in parts of Phuket itself, where a home video shows frantic Thais running from a churning wall of water at least 25 feet high.

"I have survivor's guilt," Veronica says. "We feel like guests in their country, and they are the ones who died."

In following days, the Taylors took clothing, bed linens, toothbrushes and other personal items to an aid center for victims. Veronica, 53, also spent two days volunteering at a morgue, where she entered information about missing victims into a database.

The Taylors, like many other foreigners, have been impressed by the Thais' resilience and their ability to smile even in the face of tragedy. This is not a nation big on grief counselors and psychiatrists; what the Thais in Phuket need and want, the Taylors say, is for the tourists to come back so life can move ahead.

As for the Taylors, their story is "not one of a struggle to survive but rather one of being led from harm's way," as Ken puts it. They are grateful Veronica's mother was not at home when the wave hit; that Veronica had canceled a diving trip to soon-to-be-ravaged Phi Phi Island.

"I am reminded of what a Native American once told me," Ken, 63, wrote in a memoir of the tsunami. "Even after a great storm that may have caused destruction, injury and loss of life, the survivors would thank the Great Spirit for the rain."

Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 23, 2005, 00:15:19]