|
MAT alum recounts surviving the tsunami - and the kindness of strangers
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
By: Arlette Stuip
The story of our ill-fated vacation with my husband, Tom, in Khao Lak, Thailand
Also read Arlette Stuip's article on Fundraising Efforts for Tsunami Survivors.
We decided to return this past Christmas to Khao Lak, 90 minutes north of Phuket in Thailand, because we had a wonderful time there last year. We had come there after spending five days on a live-aboard dive boat around the Similan Islands. This year we had planned on doing some diving out of Khao Lak, but for some reason kept postponing it. 
Khao Lak has a beautiful 10 km beach. Between the beach and the road (about 200 meter) lies a string of resort hotels, mostly wooden bungalows that are nicely situated in lush vegetation. The first two hotels, one of them ours, are situated on a slope, because the road descends from some higher ground to beach level. We were woken up at 8:00 am because our bungalow was trembling. We cursed those construction workers for starting so early, without consideration for us jet-lagged tourists. We fell asleep again, and woke up again at 10. We decided to make a run to breakfast, which was served until 10:30. 
The restaurant was outside on a terrace, overlooking the pool and beyond that the beach and the Andaman Sea. After we sat down, my husband Tom noticed that the waiters were all staring and pointing at the sea. He stood up to see what they were looking at, and saw that the sea-water was receding rapidly. It was a fascinating sight, and many people got their cameras out and walked toward the dry seabed and onto it. They started looking for shells and other things, were jogging out there and throwing balls. The beach itself was full of sunbathing tourists.
Tom had an uncomfortable feeling about all this. He lived two years on the beach in California, and had never seen a sea behave like this, so far outside the parameters of tidal fluctuations. Then all of a sudden it clicked: the earlier trembling was an earthquake. The receding water (300 meters, all the way to the reef by now) was the prelude to a tidal wave. 
Tom grabbed my hand and screamed, "Run!" I was reluctant because the waiter just brought us a specially prepared vegetarian Thai curry we had requested and I did not want to hurt his feelings. At that same moment, Tom saw a high wall of water come crashing over the reef towards us at a speed of 40-50 mph. The sound was bloodcurdling. We ran uphill, fast, and the water was right behind us. I ran out of breath and energy and felt almost nauseous. The noise was deafening, like airplanes flying over our heads.
We ran to the road that went uphill to the hotel lobby, which was located near the higher road. About 10 other restaurant guests followed us. Halfway up the hill, Tom dared to look behind and saw below us at the beach and pool area a boiling mass of water where only a minute before had been sunbathing tourists. In it were palm trees, beach chairs and parts of bungalows twirling around, as well as people that were frantically trying to hold on to something. The breakfast table we had been sitting at was covered. Since I am a slow runner, I had to choose between running and turning. There was no extra split second to do both.
 We kept running until we reached the deck at the reception, from where we had a good view of this inferno. We saw that another wave was coming in, and decided to keep going for higher ground. We crossed the road and climbed the steep hill into the jungle beyond it, not feeling safe until we gained another 50 meters in altitude. There we waited for two hours, knowing that only few people would have survived the onslaught down below.
When we ran up, Gaby, Marlene and Nina, three German women, and Lisa, an 8-year-old Austrian girl, were with us. Marlene had found Lisa and her dad sitting on the ceiling beams of a hotel room which was filled with water. They had been washed up all the way from the beach and miraculously ended up together. Lisa's mother was missing. Her father begged Marlene to take his daughter, since he could not get down and his lungs were too full of water.
Gaby was separated from her husband and was desperately frightened. She had swirled around in the water, sure she was going to die, and ended up on a roof. She stayed there until someone brought a ladder. Her husband was last seen washed to the top of a tree which was too high to get down from. We huddled together for two hours, watching the sea.
When the sea looked calm again we descended to the hotel reception at the road, and found a score of severely wounded people. We helped to get them onto the back of pick-up trucks that would drive them to the hospital, not knowing however if the road was OK. Everyone was wounded or dead or missing someone or missing many. One night we were drinking pina coladas  and beer with people around the pool bar, the next day we were whispering words of love in their ears as we washed their wounds and put them in makeshift trucks, direction hospital. Blood everywhere. I ran to a bedroom to grab pillows for their bumpy ride. I feared they would slide out, as the truck back could not close, but Bernd, a German traveler, jumped in the back to accompany them.
Someone told Gaby that her husband was looking for her, and she flew down the road toward him. We found Lisa's dad, Luis, lying down in the lobby, white as a sheet. He was relieved to see his daughter, but had not found his wife. The lobby armchairs and couches were covered in blood.
Jurgen, a big strong Swedish man, had been dancing at the bar, clowning around at night, with his wife and friends, while Tom and I were swimming in the pool watching him. We had drinks with him but he did not speak much English so we mostly laughed and grunted. When we came down from the mountain, he was alone, bleeding, covered in deep gashes. His arm looked like an intestine, insides hanging out. His genitals protruded from his torn bathing suit. We poured water and disinfectant on his wounds, trying to get the sand out while he whispered over and over "ambulance."
We could not find a truck to take him to a hospital, and he waited a long time. He was doubled over in pain, wounded on every part of his body. Finally a truck came and we could load him on. Another man whispered to me but I could not understand what he was saying. Perhaps it was his name or his hotel name. They drove him away.
When we sent people to the hospital, I was full of anxiety. The roads might be closed because many poles had fallen over; they might be washed away. The wounded might have to wait for hours in the hallways. The ride could be too bumpy. The hospital could be too near the water. We might be sending them to their death.
A young German woman in the hotel lobby was in a state of panic because her boyfriend was missing. I kept trying to take off her heavy backpack, but she kept putting it back on, repeating, "It's all I have left of his!" I tried to call his hotel but that's when I learned that all the phones were down. I advised her to return to the beach and search for him, not realizing that more waves were coming. She took off.
Then we were warned that another tsunami was on its way. There was a shop right by the hotel lobby. I went in to quickly grab a bottle of water for the next jungle wait, but the woman who ran it saw me and started shouting. I wondered if I was in trouble for looting but she was insisting that I take an entire package of 12 water bottles. She offered ice cream, anything. Tom took yogurt; our friends took sandals and ice cream. The Thai woman was happy to help us.
We climbed up into the jungle again, with Marlene, Nina, and Lisa. We were rapidly becoming a family. We tried to take Lisa's dad Luis with us but his lungs were so full of water that after two steps he was exhausted, so we sent him, too, to the hospital, although he did not want to go.
We waited three more hours on the mountain. There we met Shu, a Thai man looking out toward the sea. His son was out fishing and his wife worked at a hotel on the beach. His eyes were red from crying, yet he served us papayas which grew there and kept repeating that he wished us a safe trip. He took his scooter to search for them but came back shortly as the roads were closed off.
We saw the wave come and recede. It was not as big as the morning ones. We then came down to the road where cars and flatbed trucks loaded with wounded were driving by non-stop. No one knew what to do, where to go, if another wave or earthquake would come, where the safest place would be. We did not know if Phuket airport was washed away or if the bridge connecting the mainland to Phuket remained, if the roads to the hospital were still reachable. Nobody knew, everything was hearsay.
We did not want to go down to the lower level and see all the corpses that littered the beach. Lucky for us, our room was high enough to have been spared, so we went to get our luggage. Some hotel staff returned and they suggested we get in a truck and head for a police post, located on the highest part of the road. As we were leaving, Marlene yelled out "Wait! Wait!" and she ran in search of Bernd who was still in the hotel.
There was no electricity, no cell-phone network nor radio, so we spent the night at a small restaurant stand, beside the police station, where Id, the thin 27 year-old Thai woman who ran it, took great care of the 50 stranded tourists who spent the night there. She fed us all dinner. This was not bread and crackers but Thai curry, meat, rice, vegetables. Such generosity was typical of everywhere we went. She was serving us rather than looking for her own missing uncle. Her grandma was sobbing. Id was an angel, working all day and all night and all day again, to make sure that everyone was ok. She gave us coffee, bananas, care and love. She fed not only the 50 tourists but also a few hundred soldiers and police who kept passing through all night and day. She distributed hundreds of bottles of precious water. She came up to all of us, repeating "have more, did you have enough? Do you want more?" She served a vegetarian dinner to Tom and me. She appeared with mats, blankets and towels for everyone to sleep on her cement floor. 
Id told us a wry story: She owned a fruit stall on the beach and received a phone call from her uncle, a police officer on Phuket Island, that a tsunami was coming. She ran to the beach to warn people but they shrugged her off. Then she used her cell phone and called the hotels. They too refused to believe her. She climbed the stairs up to the road and safety, but lost her whole business in the waves. The restaurant we were in now belonged to her aunt.
Most people were missing friends or family members and had no possessions other than the beach clothes they were wearing. This is where everyone shared horror stories, each worse than the previous, where people comforted each other all night. There was a full moon and the cicadas were noisy
We heard of two people who quickly ran to their rooms to get documents and were not heard from again. One man was the sole survivor of his family: his wife, daughter, son in law, and grandchildren were dead. One friend had to turn over many dead bodies as he searched for his missing friend. He was in shock. He and his friend's wife had split up and searched 6 hospitals but no luck. Bernd, one amazing friend we spent 60 hrs with, had felt a pulse of a woman with a mouth full of broken teeth. He was giving her mouth to mouth resuscitation when he realized that she was dead - he had been feeling his own pulse. I didn't want to hear more.
One story in particular stands out in my heart. Anders was with his 16-year-old daughter Sofia who was in pain. His wife Maria and his daughter's friend were missing. He owned a hotel in Sweden but it was low season so he was in Khao Lak too. He was on the beach with his daughter Sofia and when the wave hit they were separated, both swirling in the water. He found her in a hospital, six hours later. She was wounded but perhaps worse than that was the trauma she suffered from being surrounded by dead bodies in the water. He was beside himself with fear and worry. Anders and his daughter slept right beside us on the cement floor that night. We shared cigars Ð such a simple pleasure. There were tearful hugs.
I will never forget Harry, an Australian man lying next to us, crying out in his sleep when he turned over. Both his knees had hit a car as he saw his wife smash into a tree, devastated that he could not hold onto her. He held on to the car window until the water receded and the car sank in the muddy sand. He ran up and waited for three hours when the warning for a new wave came, and now regretted that lost time when he could have been looking for his wife. All he had was his bathing suit - he limped away early in the morning, barefoot, to begin searching the hospitals. We left his information at the airport for the Australian ambassador to help him, but don't know if that helped.
One man was in his bungalow with his wife and the cleaning woman so did not see the wave coming. The water pushed him out of the bathroom window along with the maid. His wife was pushed out of another window. He did not want to believe that his wife was dead because he had not seen her body. His daughter later told him that his wife, her mom, was found wounded on a tree top.
All night, we heard mostly very sad stories of decimated families and lost friends, as people exchanged stories, horror stories of getting hit by a floating car, of the glass, TVs and refrigerators swirling in the water, of missing loved ones. We were the luckiest people there.
The next day the road was clear, and we could start the long trip back home (the Hague, Holland). A man gave ten of us a two-hour ride in his pick up truck to a bus station. He refused money. A woman sat beside him, and after pointing to the bus, she told me she needed to get back to search for her missing sister. She rode two hours each way, just so that she could point out the right bus to us, when she could have been using that precious time. Such are the Thai folk.
The floor of the bus station was covered with wounded people, scratched, bruised, cut, all waiting for the bus, which would take us to Bangkok. I felt stupid taking my luggage while others were in torn bathing suits but that feeling lessened when we could share. The people at the station, lying on cardboard on the cement, bandaged, with dirty feet, moaning, lit up when Tom approached them with espresso from his portable machine. They nearly cried at the opportunity to use our cell phone and reach their families in Denmark, the Philippines, Germany, Australia and Sweden to tell them they were alive. We met Eric from Bruxelles. He was alone when a wave not of water but of earth and trees rolled up to the beach garden he was in. He too was caught in the water and just barely made it. He had to call his friends and Germany and tell them that the house they had lent him was gone.
A family across the road from the bus station invited us to use their shower. They brought us soap, shampoo, mats. I taught Lisa some English words as I bathed her in a small tub and pretended to be angry as she splashed me with water. We had all taken turns trying to make her laugh, postponing the moment when she might find out she was motherless or an orphan.
After an 8-hour wait, our bus arrived and we rode 11 endless bumpy hours through the night to Bangkok. One bruised woman was in huge pain as her neck brace hit her seat. One young woman cried out constantly, as her boyfriend did all he could to comfort her. One man jumped out every time the bus stopped so he could cry alone. He told me that all he saw were the dead bodies.
We arrived at the airport at 6 a.m. and were told we could fly out at 3 a.m. We heard from a diver who searched for her embassy in Bangkok that she wasted seven hours trying to get travel documents. Our experience was the opposite. We were sent to a special room at the airport where smiling Thai people instantly gave all our friends airplane tickets and travel documents. We could use the phones for anywhere in the world, and were offered breakfast and newspapers in the VIP lounges.
Just as we were saying goodbye to our small group of new friends whom we had bonded with for 60 hours, Marlene and Nina found out that the little Austrian girl's mother had survived - they were able to reach her grandmother in Austria and heard that the mother had also called there. We let out screams of joy at the airport. 
Peggy, who was in my 5th grade ESL class at the American School of the Hague 13 years ago, is now 23 years old and lives in Bangkok. Her dad Yoot and her picked us up from the airport and we spent the day with them and her mom. We had called them the day before, and they were looking for us at the bus station since 5 a.m. Yoot helped us make an airport money transfer to Id, the woman who gave away everything at her restaurant. He was concerned about the lack of safety warnings and asked if we'd be willing to talk to the Thai folk about this. He drove us to a TV station where we were interviewed. Tom spoke of the tsunami warning systems he had seen all over Japan.
At night, we returned to the crowded airport. While standing at the check-in line, Dutch people shared their stories. We met a snorkeler who was in a speedboat, just ahead of the wave which followed right behind him for 20 minutes! When they arrived back, the captain knew to find a waterway he could follow and get the ten passengers closer on land. When the captain dropped them off, he returned to find his brother on sea and that's when he was swallowed by the second wave.
Before boarding the plane, we spent our last bahts on two books. The Thai salesman said he would not be celebrating Christmas or New Year's because of the sadness. The saleswoman beside him looked at us sadly as she put her hands together in the Thai greeting and said "sawadika." A wonderful farewell to a wonderful folk.
That night we sat 11 hours on the plane. I wanted nothing more than to get back home. Yet the second we landed in Amsterdam, I felt a strong urge to return to Thailand to help out in the hospitals. Now I feel less guilty as the Thai government is asking for volunteers to stop coming. It's hard for them to take care of travelers.
We watched the BBC and had access to e-mail in Peggy's home. We wanted to tell the world how very kind the Thai people had been, caring for the tourists, when they were victims themselves. I wrote a few sentences on-line. When we got home, three different BBC stations reacted and called us for interviews. We were also on the 8:30 Thai Nation news for 30 minutes, and in the Thai newspaper. Tom called the Dutch newspaper and a local TV crew came to our house to interview us. We kept repeating over and over how amazing the Thai people were and how we were planning on returning to Thailand as soon as possible. It was important to tell that.
I just read about how the animals escaped, even the elephants, and I remember the beach dog who ran up the mountain ahead of us...
We are puzzled that while the travelers were running for their lives, the Thai people were running towards danger, to drag the tourists from the beach, knowing that another wave could come. The hotel tailor was wet and covered in sand, as he ran back and forth. Wheelchairs and ladders appeared out of nowhere. Each car and truck, which was flagged down, stopped and became a makeshift ambulance, which took the wounded, or anyone else who wanted to leave. One hotel worker wrote down the names of everyone we missed and she drove to the hospital to get news for us. We did not encounter one single Thai person who abandoned us to go find their own family or look at their own washed away homes.
The Thai people are and were all fantastic and if there is anything that anybody should be told in the West it should be: go to Thailand for your next holiday or whenever you can any time in the future: that is the best help for the people here to get back to their life, to their daily routine, to their income. The Thai people without exception were wonderful. Despite their own sorrow and losses they did all they could to help us. We are deeply moved by their attitude, and will go back to Thailand soon.
- - -
Last note: We called our friends to see how they were doing. Anders, the Swedish man is reunited with his wife Maria and his daughter's friend. When he checked into the hospital in Phuket, his wife had checked into the same hospital 5 minutes before him. She was right outside his hospital room, by hazard. He told me that the first hospital he took his daughter to for stitches, the hospital I wish I had gone to, is now closed because of health hazards. He saw people throwing up vomit and blood on the floor, waiting lined up in the hallways...
Lisa, the 8-year-old girl from Austria is now with her dad who is fine. Her mom is in a hospital in Austria and will be home when she is healed. Her father said that it was so hard to breathe because his lungs were full of sea water that he thought he would die during the one-hour ride to the hospital. Once there, he waited 2 and 1/2 days to get help. He saw his wife in the same hospital that they were finally evacuated from because of the health hazards.
We cannot find news of Harry or Jurgen. We've called embassies in Holland, Thailand, Australia and Sweden, dive centers, and hotels, but it's hard without last names. We've asked Id to try and find Shu - the man who was crying on the mountains while he offered us papayas.
Marlene and Nina, the German women we spent 60 hours with, drove to Holland to visit us the week we got back. I was relieved to hear about the guilt Marlene carried. Relieved because I thought I was the only one. I will never forgive myself for not going to the hospital with the wounded, for sending them off instead, for not sharing more with everyone - maybe mainly for coming back unscratched.
The guilt is hard to bear. It penetrates everything. And the not being able to cry. Otherwise, it's still dreamlike and watching the news, I don't feel affected and that makes me feel hard. Just sipping champagne and watching friends light firecrackers on New Year's Eve, while the bloated bodies are still floating, is too selfish for words. If I am ever in an emergency situation again, I know I will react in a way which will not leave me feeling such shame.
We were the only husband and wife couple we met there that was complete. We had each other, not one scratch, even our luggage was intact. We were with hundreds of people and have not met one other person with our luck. We are happy to be alive, and at the same time weep for all those people who were not so fortunate.
Several months have now passed and we have recovered from the nightmarish experience. Letters poured in from around the world, many of them from strangers, all expressing their sympathy. We had written our story in order to better process the experience, never imagining that it would be forwarded from Texas to Japan and that the response would be so overwhelming.
We were worried about the people we had met on December 26 and tried for the first six weeks to locate them. At the time, we had not thought of exchanging names or addresses, and later on, regretted that. Jurgen from Sweden looked nearly dead when we left him, and we wanted to find out if he had survived. We were guilt-ridden about not accompanying him to the hospital. Our first obstacle was the strictly enforced privacy law in Sweden. We were searching for a man without knowing his last name or town, and no one we spoke to was even allowed to try to help us. We called the embassies in Holland, Sweden, and Thailand. We called several travel agencies in Sweden. We searched on missing people lists. We contacted Swedish newspapers and magazines. We called the police in Sweden. A few Swedish friends were looking for us as well.
We also wanted to find Harry, the Australian man who had watched his wife smash into a tree, the man who cried out in pain as he slept on the floor besides us, because his knees had hit a car as the wave swept over him. The same strict confidentiality law was in effect in Australia. We were looking for a Harry on such a large continent! We contacted all the diving agencies listed in Cairns, and they in turn, contacted their diving members. We contacted the Australian ambassadors to Thailand (there were three of them!) and even wrote to John Howard, the prime Minister.
Finally, after 6 weeks of non-stop searching, we received an email from Harry in Australia stating that he heard we were looking for him. Having heard so many distressing stories of sick people using the tsunami to their advantage, we asked Harry to prove that he was indeed Harry. He wrote that we had given him melatonin to help him sleep, and had explained that it was an herbal pill which pilots took. He wrote that we had watched Id's dogs play around the fire that night and no one else could have known these things. We were relieved to find him, and deeply saddened to hear that his wife had died. He had to return to his two children in Australia with this sad news.
Our friends Peggy and Yoot who live in Bangkok flew down to Khao Lak. They met Id, the woman in Khao Lak who so kindheartedly fed and cared for over 50 stranded tourists the night of the tsunami, including us. And they met Shu, the man who fed us papayas as we waited in the jungle. It turns out that Id and Shu are cousins. When Peggy looked him up and thanked him for us, he said with tears that he wished he could have done more to help all of us, but at that time that was the only thing he could do. He told her that he is so thankful for everyone of us.
Shu explained how he almost drowned too. He was working near the beach when he spotted the weird sea level. He tried to warn people around him. He was dragged out by the wave about 2 kilometers until he could find something to hold on to. He was thinking about his wife - they were working in different places but he knew that if this happened to her, she wouldn't make it because she could not swim. He's found his wife's body already. His son survived. It's amazing that he did not mention this when he was caring for us, and that he was so concerned about our well being.
Peggy and Yoot visited what remained of our hotel. As luck would have it, the bartender was there for a few minutes. He recognized the photo of Jurgen which Peggy showed him. He told her that the man's name was not Jurgen; it was Ake. Jurgen was his friend. Amazingly enough, he also knew his last name. Once we knew that, our friend in Sweden looked him up in the phone book, and after nine wrong numbers, she found the right Ake. This is the man who was dancing at the hotel bar, the man in the wheelchair in our photo. She called him in Stockholm and found out that he was in very poor shape. He had had six surgeries in the first four weeks. He had a metal plate in his back. He had lost his wife and friends. He did not see the purpose of living without his wife.
Our life has gone back to what it used to be: teaching for Arlette and playing and teaching banjo for Tom, bicycle rides, dinners with friends. The main difference is that we value our days even more than before and refuse to spend much time on things we do not thoroughly enjoy.
Since their ordeal, Tom and Arlette Stuip have led a Fundraising Effort for the Village of Khao Lak.
|
