(This map is from The World Atlas)
On Boxing Day, 2004, I found myself tied up in the strangest event I think I’ve ever experienced. My family was on a two week package from England which started off in Bangkok and then spent most of the time traveling between the islands and beaches in the south of Thailand. The tour was led by a likeable young Thai girl called ‘Kathy’ for those uninitiated with long Thai names. I managed to tag along with the holiday from the beginning, having greeted Mum, Dad and little sis Sophie off the plane. Kathy became a bit concerned by week one; I was following the company’s itinerary to the tee but for a quarter of the price. No one noticed, or cared. Here we are a few days before Christmas on Koh Hai, near Trang.
That day I had gone for a morning walk along the beach on Koh Lanta, which is in the Andaman Sea off the West Coast of Thailand. After that, I stopped by at the next resort where my family was staying. Remember, this was Boxing Day; a LOT of people were probably still comatose from Christmas celebrations at around 9.45. Koh Lanta is in the vicinity of Koh Phi Phi and Phuket, as the screenshot from Google Earth shows. You can see Lanta at the bottom right, Phi Phi to the West and further afield is Phuket.
It seemed that there was a small commotion developing on the beach. We wondered down to the front, as did all the others, locals and tourists alike. The sea looked unusually violent; it was bubbling and frothing, and undulating erratically. I looked to my right and walked along the front of some beachfront cabins. The stream that previously flowed harmless through the sand and into the sea had turned into something much larger, and I looked on in disbelief as I saw wooden tables and chairs being carried out to sea in its now powerful current. We stood for a few minutes more observing all this, and then I decided to turn back home. As the stream was now too dangerous to cross I had to walk out the back of my parents resort, and back down to the seafront and my bungalow. As I reached the beginning of the path that led back to where I was staying I became aware of people passing me, not slowly either. People were rushing away from the beach. I must have just missed the first wave as I walked around the back of the hotels, because when I got back to the tree lined frontage of the beach the thatched building where I’d eaten my breakfast was collapsed.
I had no conception of what had happened. There was debris and collapsed buildings all around. I walked over to a group of lads I knew from the resort and they told me what happened. As I was talking to a Geordie guy, another commotion rose and you could hear cries along the lines of ‘There’s another one coming’…….meaning another wave. We must have been 25 meters from the shore but you could see it coming. I wasn’t a huge crashing wave that shattered into the beach like the pictures you saw from Phuket, it was more like that wave that comes in too far and you have to pick up your towels and stuff to move back – except this one came in 150-200 meters too far. Considering the level of the sea and the distance and height the water had gained, it was still frighteningly powerful. By the time of this second wave most people had left the beach, but those remaining including myself managed to avoid it by jogging back and keeping an eye on the approaching water; it was never a life threatening situation. About 5 minutes later a third and smaller wave washed ashore.
The immediate reaction was bemusement. There were about 10-15 guys remaining in my area of the beach, not including the local people (although most of those had fled too). We wondered onto the beach and started chatting to 3 English guys who were puffing away on a huge spliff without a care in the world. As we sat there speculating on what had happened a solitary wave with a small crest made its way across the bay. It was singularly the strangest thing I’ve ever seen as it was totally perpendicular to the shore. If you've ever seen a wave going completely sideways like that, please let me know. We tried to find a TV, no luck – all the power was out. I had no idea where everybody had gone, including my family. We strolled along the beach and in amongst the ruins of various bungalows, restaurants and other buildings that were too close to the sea. We ended up crawling under a bamboo roof that had fallen down in order to get to a refridgerator from which we took all the ice cream before it melted, and handed it round.
After maybe an hour, a café up the road began showing BBC World, the international news channel. Everybody was stunned as the news came in. We sat and watched the information scrolling across the screen: Earthquake in Indonesia…….”Earthquake, bloody hell!”……..largest in living memory “Jesus!”………….up to 8.8 on the richter scale……”This is mad!”. Then the news started coming in from the locale…..Dead and missing in Phuket………Koh Phi Phi hit badly………. All that was enough to send shivers down your spine; they were talking about hundreds dead on Koh Phi Phi and we could see the island from where we were sat. We had known people on the morning boat going over there. All the local Thais had friends or relatives working over there. It was a horrible gut feeling, all we could do was sit and watch the Television. I watched for maybe an hour, not able to look away. Time to find the family. I rented a motorbike from the café and started to drive around the island. It was a needle in a haystack search but just as I was about to give up and go back I spotted Kathy on the side of the road. She pointed me in the direction of the group which was up a dirt track camped out with lots of other tourists. I got there and my family was hugely relieved having no idea of what had happened to me.
When the waves had struck the vast majority of people had turned and fled to higher ground. People were unwilling to come back down to sea level. The news was still very sketchy so it was understandable. My family’s group were moved to a place way inland - shared with a load of elephants, as it was the starting point for elephant treks through the jungle. A few members of the group had gotten separated in the panic and were some distance away. It took Kathy and myself an hour or so to find them, going up and down different hillside tracks on our motorbikes. Some of the group were very shaken, others very calm. The rumors that were floating around almost killed me. One women said knowledgably “There’s another coming, about 80m high”…… this was not the best time to laugh in someone’s face, but I exchanged glances with my Dad when she dropped that one. I know we were both imagining an 80 meter wave in our heads. “You’re gonna need to climb a little higher love”. Some refused to leave the elephant house and ended up lying in a rotten field being eaten alive for the night. My crew came back down to the town and slept in a bar with a few others. I was planning on sleeping back in my bungalow by the beach, but when I got down there I realized there was no way I could…it was ghostly awful down at the beach, very chilling.
I only took two pictures all day. I started to shoot down at the beach but then I saw the Thai people rooting through what they had left and I put the camera away. Here is the second and only other picture I took that day.
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