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

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

pieter,

thank you for sharing your story. in the face of so much loss and death,

isn't it wonderful that we can rejoice that some are spared? i am so

glad to hear you and your family are okay. we need you here with us.

may the new year bring even brighter blessings.

sue in seattle

 

 

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