Phuket

[Guest guest]

Thanks for thinking of me in Thailand.

Returned yesterday afternoon from Phuket.

We flew down, Thai Airways (myself, Noi, and the 2 children, Saifa,

out 4 years 9 months daughter, and Tawan, our 8 month son) on the

21st, Tuesday at 11 am, with the intention to return to Bangkok on

the 26th, Sunday evening.

We stayed at the JW Marriott Phuket, which is around 20 minutes from

the airport, located north central of the Island.

We had the same one bedroom beachfront suite as last year. From our

location is a short walk out to the pool and behind the pool, the

central part of the hotel with the lobby and main restaurants on the

2nd floor, and shops, a large pond with fire shoots on the ground

floor.

Naturaly, we had a good time. We visited Phuket Fantasy on Christmas

even and Santa came on Christmas day in the afternoon.

As the trip before, the health club let me use one of their rooms to

lead a Kundalini Yoga Sadhana for anyone that wanted to join up (room

for 6 people, plus myself), an people, some who had been practicing

yoga for many years, had the chance to experience their life force

eminating in and around their bodys and radiating through their

minds, with just one or 2 classes, 2 hours from 6 to 8 am.

Our last day we were to leave the hotel around 4 in the afternoon for

a 6 evening flight, so rather than going swimming towards the end of

the afternoon, as I did with Saifa each day, we were getting ready to

go out around 10 am.

Saifa was at the glass windows, while I was finishing up some e-mails

at the desk, when she called me to look at the boat. I went over and

saw a 25 meter yacht coming across from the horizon being pushed by a

large wave. The boat hit a sandbar of some type some about 100 meters

out, but the wave kept coming.

The private, secluded beachfront of the JW Marriott is relatively

small, maybe around 10 meters of slightly sloping beach front that

goes up sharply at a 45 degree incline for another 30 to 40 meters.

Then there's another 50 meters from the crest of that upward include

across flat sandy area with light vegetation to the pool area and

maybe 60 to 70 meters to our patio and the sliding glass doors of our

suite.

While watching the yacht, suddenly the water comes up over the steep

incline and in a flash covers the ground between, hits the patio, but

not enough to wet the top of the deck chairs, and just barely splashes

against the sliding glass doors. Water seeps in.

Within a few minutes, several security people are into the room

checking that we're alright, and urging us to leave the room to go to

the lobby.

Saifa starts to cry that she loves the boat but the boat is dead,

referring to the yacht floundering against the sandbar. I call it a

sandbar, but it's really just a kind of an underwater hill, that

slopes off sharply immediately after, with the space between that

hill and the beachfront also being quite deep. The water in the cove

out to the horizon from our vantage point is quite flat, almost

placid, as every day, except for an 8 to 10 foot solitary long wave

that rises out of the deep every few minutes, that pounds the side of

the yacht so that she nearly tips over each time. No action from the

crew whatsoever. Finally we see the yacht trying to turn into the

oncoming waves. Quite a struggle, as each time she's turned 30 or 40

degrees back out to see, she's slammed again by the next wave.

Finally, she's headed straight out, hits the oncoming wave head-on

rises about 45 degreed and plunges down the other side, but somehow

keeps going. We're trying to imagine what happened to the Captain,

passengers and crew of the yacht. Maybe everyone was knocked out

with the first wave,then someone awoke and decided to try to get out

to sea...

Later we heard that more than 250 fishing and pleasure boats that were

out at sea when the wave hit the coast never returned. One can only

imaging the "fear of God" that must have entered into the people out

on the yacht and all these missing ships and others that survived.

At the lobby most of the other guests, especially those on the ground

floor, have gathered. The hotel staff security and management tell

us that they are told that a second wave will hit.

We looked at the swimming pool from the balcony of the 2 restaurants.

>From the lobby, where the check in counters are also located, there's

a long wide shallow pool situated in a way that you see the ocean off

its far side. To each side of that pool, are the main restaurants,

with another seafood restaurant out to one side of the pool

overlooking the area going out to the ocean.

The swimming pool is maybe 100 meters or longer long, parallel with

the ocean front, and 8 to 20 meters wide in various areas. There's a

relatively shallow side towards the right facing the ocean with a

concrete waterslide between. Our suite another 50 meters further to

the right over a lawn with several slower and shrub areas. The deep

side of the pool doesn't have the "protection" of the waterslide and

is also surrounded by deck chairs, tables and umbrellas.

The wave, the Tsunami, that hit Phuket didn't reach the ground floor

below the lobby. probably our suite was the only one that was

touched, but to give an idea of the force of the wave, the water came

up and over the 30 meter 45 degree incline from the shore crossed the

60 to 70 meter stretch of underbrush and light thickets and splashed

muck and debris up and over the waterslide leaving that side of the

swimming pool murky, but the side of the pool that didn't have the

waterside's protections was over half filled with mud and debris and

all the deck chars, tables and umbrellas, like a mudbath. But that's

as far as it reached.

At the lobby, eventually,we were told to go back to our room and

quickly pack as they expected another larger wave to come. So we went

back and quickly packed, then parked ourselves on one of the many very

spacious couches around the lobby, while the children took naps. I

guess time flies when your stunned, or too numb to really know what

has happened. The Marriot opened the 2 2nd floor restaurants for

free lunch and otherwise were so well organized, that, it seemed as

though it was just another day at a resort.

Nevertheless, those who had their wits better about them, made decisions, where possible.

The airport was flooded, so all flights were cancelled with a promise

for an update by 6 pm. Many of the people staying at the hotel,

arranged to cancel the balance of their stay and return to Bangkok or

some of the other resort areas in Thailand and Asia not hit, or go

home. There were people from Russia, the US, Hong Kong, China,

Japan, Australia, the Middle East, South America, everywhere.

While the JW Marriott was not heavily hit, and in fact, working

through the night, had the swimming pool pristine about the time we

left the next day, and the areas out to the shoreline in the process

of being cleaned up, the rest of the coastal areas of Phuket, many

not having the protection of a sandbar and then a 45 degree 30

embankment from the shoreline were wiped out. The wave came into the

more sturdy villas and hotels along the shoreline and simply smashed

through the doors and windows and kept on going through to the other

side and beyond, picking up any and everything and any body along the

way. All these will undoubtedly be repaired in the coming months, and

6 months from now, no one will notice the difference, but the many

bungalows along the beach were simply washed away, demolished, as a

wave, they estimate traveling up to 500 mph his the coast.

An interesting aside regarding the many people that cancelled their

stay at the JW Marriott, is that the disaster wasn't necessarily bad

news for them, as there were so very many people in these sturdy

villas and shoreline hotels that were now homeless and without

lodging that, when I asked if I could stay on a few more days, I was

told that they expected to fill up the hotel with those caught in the

disaster needing places to stay. I heard that the 5 Hiltons in Phuket

also came out nearly unscathed, though the Sofitel in Koh Lak, just

above Phuket and many hotels in Krabi to the north again were

devastated. A few of the islands near Phuket were also overrun with

water.

The reports of death that kept coming in and continue to mount even

now, were based on actual body counts, with always double the

estimates of missing. It seems that even now, as the body count is

reaching 33,000, that the number estimated as missing continues to be

double.

In Phuket now, the body count is over 1,000 with another over 1,000 unaccounted for.

In the last 6 years, I've stayed at Marriotts around 1,600 nights, and

the Phuket stay turned out to be alright. We were lucky that I had to

send off some last minute e-mails and did not head out to the pool at

10, as planned. There were a number of people around the pool,

mostly staff and luckily, mostly on the shallow side, so that when

the water hit there were only a few minor cuts and burses, nothing

like what happened in other resort hotels, villas, homes and

bungalows along the coast, not to mention some of the tourist shops

and businesses along the boardwalks of several towns.

The airport opened by 5 the same day with all flights resumed. As our

flight was at 6, we missed out, and I didn't have the presence of mind

to try to arrange a later flight until Noi put some pressure on me. I

called my secretary, and she arranged the flight for the next day,

yesterday (Monday 11:20 am). The airport was packed, numerous people

on standby for any flight out. That evening the Thai government

announced that it would give free flights out for anyone stranded, as

many of the tourists lost everything they had, cash, credit cards and

identification, and free lodging was arranged for them once they'd

reach Bangkok. Despite the Exodus, the tourists continue to fly in

to the bookings they've made at the hotels that were not harmed or

recovered quickly.

In Bangkok, we heard that the 9 Richter scale earthquake that was

behind the Tsunami was so strong that it rocked the tall buildings in

Bangkok, and that our apartment building of 40 stories was evacuated

for several hours, while we were gone.

A couple of reporters called to get my story. It's nothing like the

stories of many other foreigners. Of the people that died from the

Tsunami in Phuket, 70% were foreign tourists on holidays for

Christmas. The King's autistic grandchild of his eldest daughter

that moved to San Diego, was also out swimming and lost at sea, his

body just recovered.

Thailand has never had a catastrophe like this.

On CNN, even before the body count across Asia was called at 4,500,

reporters described it as a "Disaster of Biblical Proportions" In

business contracts, it's called an "Act of God" allowing agreements

to be cancelled without penalty on both sides, whether it involves a

hotel stay, a flight cancellation or a shipment of goods and

services.

When the reporters asked me what I thought was the lesson, at first I

was going to give a trite response, "always stay at a Marriott

hotel." But actually, until the reality of what has really happened

began to set in, watching CNN, which is really all we get in viable

international news of this type (apart from BBC, which also focuses

on other scheduled programming, or the Thai channels, with the ever

expanding pictures of sheer devastation, anguish, tragedy and sorrow

with struggle to survive and cope, that the real message is that we

really have witnessed an "Act of God" and that act seems to be

speaking to the world in a "Biblical" way. This way has always been

a quite simple message, which is that, while throughout life we focus

on one melodrama or another, or on something we fear, such as

terrorism, religious zealotry, and how that will be harm

civilization, or on environmental problems or political problems, or

we get caught up in our pursuits, goals and dreams, and in that

process of loosing ourselves in our passions for these images, we

forget the One that has brought the universe into existence, who

sustains it for a time and dissolves it, while providing us with the

sense of being and identity in the form of our sense of "I" and the

light of awareness, which are really and always the emanation of the

God, Being and Consciousness. So, maybe, as we have not been able to

hear the inner voice, we have the voice of God speaking through the

power of nature with such a force greater than the calamities we

perpetuate on ourselves and each other that we might remember really

Who the Author of the Creation is, reflect inward, and remember the

source of the "I" and "Light" through which we build our identities.

Anyway, I'm alright and my family is alright.

Pieter