Hi from Thailand!!
I have now been in Thailand for the past week and a half. We spent the first 3 days in Bangkok, orientating to the culture, language, and religion. We headed into downtown Bangkok for a day and went around different wats, or temples. It was fascinating to see such lavishly decorated and intricately designed places. One temple was 69 metres high, and every part of it was covered in broken china pieces arranged into the shapes of flowers, people, animals from the ground right up to the top.
After Bangkok, we hopped on the 12 hour overnight bus to Khao Lak, to help with the Tsunami relief project. It was quite a surreal experience driving in to Khao Lak. This was one of the worst hit areas in Thailand. The entire place is enveloped with a feeling of sadness and quietness. Where it was previously a bustling place with 20,000 tourists there at any time, dry or rainy season, it is now almost a ghost town. A lot of the restaurants and clubs are still open, with music playing to an empty dance floor and waiters sitting expectantly on the footpath to bring the few people in to their empty restaurants. The swathe of destruction spreads inland for about 1 kilometer. After five months grass has started to grow over the piles of rubble of destroyed houses and businesses. Completely smashed cars are still littered about, wrapped around trees or down gullies. Building new houses for the homeless is still the priority over cleaning up cars or piles of rubble. Every day we would drive past an enormous police patrol boat, washed up about 800 metres inland.
The place we were staying was about 400 metres from the beach, but in order to get there you had to walk through the rubble of a destroyed hotel. We would step over mangled packs and half buried clothing, and wonder what was under the sand and bricks. Then we waded through the destroyed swimming pool and clambered up a bank onto the beach. Once there, we would side-step random bed ends and childrens shoes. In the water, floating debris would wrap itself around your ankles. I tried swimming twice, but after wading in knee deep I lost all interest and headed back home.
But more sobering than the destruction evident were the peoples’ stories of loss. Our job while we were there was helping people build their new houses. The army put up the shells of the houses, and then it was up to each family to build internal walls, tile the floors, and put in the bathroom. The men we were helping had previously been fishermen, bartenders, tour guides, etc so they were quite pleased to have a helping hand, even though none of us really knew exactly what we were doing when it came to construction. I helped a former bartender called Nuun lay tiles on the floor. Nuun took a couple of us to see his old house. Only the outer shell remained of a spacious, breezy, attractive house 300 metres from the beach. Apparently, two waves from the tsunami collided in this area, one swept in from the right, and the other from the left side. His house was in the middle. The water marks on the walls were about six feet up, as the water subsided very slowly. All the roads have been washed away, and no-one is rebuilding in that area. Nuun’s wife was working in a restaurant on the beach that day. She is listed amongst the missing, along with his three month old baby.
Nuuk, a former fisherman, needed help building the bathroom wall. He lost his wife and three children. Pod used to be a tour guide. He lost his six-months pregnant wife. He took us out elephant riding through the jungle one day, then to his friends open air restaurant in another village. He showed me a picture of his wife, and of his five year old son now being cared for by his family up north. He said “It is very hard. But seeing your group being happy, it makes me feel I can be happy too.” Media coverage from the tsunami ended months ago. But for all these people it is still a huge reality facing the loss of family, friends, homes, and businesses.
Most of the time I felt so poorly equipped to be of any use there. But a lot of the people were so grateful just to know that people still cared. There is a huge need for help with building and construction, so if any of you can put two bricks together….. New Zealand is awfully cold in the winter and Thailand is lovely and warm!!!!!
I guess this is quite a depressing update. But it’s the reality. We still had our highlights there. Our friend Pod, the ex-tour guide took us to his friends’elephant trekking business. We rode the elephants through the rainforest up to a waterfall, two hours return. It poured with rain the whole time, just adding to the authenticity of the experience (we somehow managed to time our trip with the extremely rainy season). I got to sit on an elephants neck for an hour while it’s huge leathery ears slapped my foot with every step. We saw beautiful lush green tropical jungle, and ate weird and wonderful new fruits. We got to help people in real need, and share the hope we have with them. Our time in Khao Lak was hard, but so rewarding. We left with a new empathy and respect for the people of Thailand.
So I am now writing this update from Pattaya, two hours from Bangkok. In contrast to the lush greenness off southern Thailand, Pattaya is a dusty city best known for its roaring sex trade. Hundreds and thousands of men, mainly from Europe and Australia, flood into the city. I hadn’t noticed the lack of western women here until I got stopped on the street this morning. A young American guy asked my friend and I in amazement what on earth two western women were doing in Pattaya. We are working with a coffee shop/church here. We are going to help in the Tamar centre, a place that offers employment training options for women who want to get out of prostitution. We will be here another three days, then we have a few days break on Koh Samed island before moving on to Cambodia.
I hope you are all well, I miss you all and I’d love to hear from you!
Love,
Gabrielle.
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