Gulf of Thailand
Koh Pha-Ngan, Thailand
Thank you to everyone who has written emails or called my parents to check up on my whereabouts when the tsunami hit. Thanks to all the Thai visa regulations I made secret plans to take Chris to Cambodia for Christmas. We were at Siem Reap near Angkor Wat when the earthquake and then tsunamis hit the Indian Ocean. I was sleeping in and didn't feel the earth move at all. Chris was eating breakfast and escaping me, the grumpy girl who is not, and probably never will be, a morning person.
We knew nothing of what happened until checking email in the evening, about 10 hours after the waves first hit. The numbers of dead at that time were about 3000. It seemed like such a large number of people at the time, but it now seems like so few given that the death toll has grown higher and higher with every news report.
Yesterday we returned to Thailand. We're actually at the beach now, following our original travel plans, staying on an island in the Gulf of Thailand. There were no tsunamis here, and the businesses are packed to capacity as people come here instead of going to the devastated beaches of Phuket, Krabi, and Phi-Phi. It's strange to be on this tropical island, a few meters from the ocean's edge, watching television news coverage of the destruction that took place on the other side of the peninsula. People gather around the TV, watch the video images, and are quiet. It could easily have been any of us.
Thank you to everyone who has written emails or called my parents to check up on my whereabouts when the tsunami hit. Thanks to all the Thai visa regulations I made secret plans to take Chris to Cambodia for Christmas. We were at Siem Reap near Angkor Wat when the earthquake and then tsunamis hit the Indian Ocean. I was sleeping in and didn't feel the earth move at all. Chris was eating breakfast and escaping me, the grumpy girl who is not, and probably never will be, a morning person.
We knew nothing of what happened until checking email in the evening, about 10 hours after the waves first hit. The numbers of dead at that time were about 3000. It seemed like such a large number of people at the time, but it now seems like so few given that the death toll has grown higher and higher with every news report.
Yesterday we returned to Thailand. We're actually at the beach now, following our original travel plans, staying on an island in the Gulf of Thailand. There were no tsunamis here, and the businesses are packed to capacity as people come here instead of going to the devastated beaches of Phuket, Krabi, and Phi-Phi. It's strange to be on this tropical island, a few meters from the ocean's edge, watching television news coverage of the destruction that took place on the other side of the peninsula. People gather around the TV, watch the video images, and are quiet. It could easily have been any of us.
posted by Jennifer P. at 5:30 AM
1 Comments:
Glad you're okay, Jennifer. Living on an island, yesterday's jet sounds made me wonder if what I was hearing was a tsunami. I can't even imagine the strangeness of being so close to all the destruction, but with everything looking calm.
Post a Comment
<< Home