“I stay at Nai Yang Beach the morning the tsunami came.” My first husband Oh informed me in 2018. “We have party a little bit the night before. Everybody drinking and we stay in these bamboo huts on the beach. I wake up a little after sunrise and I go back to the Pai Yang house.” I nodded my head. I knew that was up the hill far from where the tsunami was or would strike.
Oh continued. “I hear this strange sound that morning. Like this rat a tat tat tat tat.” My first husband began knocking on the tin wall for effect, building it into a slow crescendo. It began slowly as a tapping which built and built momentum until it was just a fast rattling low echo, with one tap building into the next. “I never hear the sound like that before. Mar, she tell me about the tsunami that morning.” He nodded to his mother, who nodded in acknowledgment. “I call many friends. Everybody okay, but many many dead. I want to go Koh Lak to help with everything for the cleanup and rescue party.”
“Why did you want to go Koh Lak and not stay in Phuket?” I asked Oh then about his decision to go to a more northern province. The 2004 Asian tsunami was the most deadly natural disaster in recent history, claiming some 250,000 lives globally. Around 5000 of those killed were in Thailand, with 3800 or so of the dead being in Phuket.
Oh sneered. “I want to help Thai people that nobody help. In Phuket many many farang on the news. They don’t care about Thai people.”
I nodded again. You can feel however you want about a Thai man wanting to help his own over others especially in 2004 long before he ever met me, but from my perspective it was perfectly understandable. Phuket received outsized coverage regarding the Asian tsunami in 2004 due to the simple fact that a lot of sometimes very rich usually white people like to holiday there on the beach and thus some were swept away in the waves alongside those in the more native populations. It made for a better story of the way that death did not discriminate, I suppose. Beyond that there were many filmakers and stars on holiday or in circles that knew of them.
Oh had told me stories of the cleanup in Koh Lak. Everything was covered in mud and there was a stench of death. Bodies became so bloated with bacteria that some exploded. Oh helped clear a bus with some 50 people all dead inside, who had been unfortunate to be passing on the beach road that fateful morning. He said you could see where some passengers had frantically opened the windows and tried to climb out, but they were too late. Some were stuck hanging halfway out of the bus.
A few years after the tsunami Sean Penn was supposed to come to our penthouse in Venice Beach, California as part of a documentary being filmed about the event. He cancelled at the last minute, as stars are wont to do.
I turned my attention towards brother Ka then.
“Ka?” I asked. “Where were you when the tsunami came?”
“I be the jail.” Brother Ka said wryly. “No worries about me Gen! We have the big walls! I very very safe!”
I think I laughed until I cried over his answer to the question. Phuket jail in Phuket Town was very inland and definitely safe. Ka would tell me later “I see on the TV screen. I don’t know anything.” He was close yet so far away.
“Gen?” Ka questioned me then. “Where you stay when the tsunami come? You stay Thailand, or America, or? Where you?”
“I was not in Thailand then.” I answered. “ I stay at a Best Western Hotel in Oceanside, California when I hear the news. Kuhn Joe was always watching news programs so he saw it right away.” We had some friends who frantically emailed us, in this pre Facebook social media era, inquiring if we were okay. One film maker in LA shared her detailed story later, as did another friend who was staying at the Phuket Marriot.
“It was Christmas night.”
Everybody seemed to look down all at once.
I seem to be dealing with a spook in my dreams or perhaps more than one of them. I suspect that they have to do with the Asian tsunami. I know Nai Yang Beach was hit. Not all Adaman Sea western facing Phuket beaches were hit, incidentally, as was explained in a post from a man on Maikhao beach just north of here during the tsunami. Apparently those beaches with a sharp incline to deeper water fared much better than flatter beaches where you can walk out hundreds of meters like to check out a coral reef or something. Most of the attention was centered on Patong beach in the touristy area, though this man claimed that 10-20 people lost their lives here where I stay.
My Internet detox is going well. In painting in the the restaurant this morning I noted the clear area where old cement and steel beamed posts were taken out for new ones. Were they over 20 years old? My best guess is that the old ones taken out were. The new Nai Yang Beach/Sirinat National Park adminstration buildings are lit up brightly behind the campsite. They look maybe 15 years old.
Had the abandoned restaurant been the site of the administration building in 2004? If that had been the case then National Park Staff would have likely been wandering around the area on that sunny perfect weather Boxing Day in high season morning. How many died here?
I’ve been scouring the Internet for pictures specifically of Nai Yang Beach from when the tsunami hit on December 26, 2004. The twenty year anniversary will likely be carried out on neighboring north of the airport Maikhao, where a makeshift morgue was placed along with a wall commemorating all of the victims. Let’s pray that we all get there.
Oh had a tattoo commemorating the tsunami on his upper right thigh. He had drawn it out and said a friend helped him tattoo it. Because of its location it was only visible if my first husband was wearing only underwear, say, or perhaps some super short Daisy Dukes he would have never been caught dead in. I wish I had taken a picture of it as the tattoo was buried and burned alongside his body after the motorbike accident. It only exists in my memory.
We seem to be in the spooky season. As a more general question, if HAARP et al has the ability to manipulate the weather from above, could it also do so from below like by causing an undersea earthquake? Or was the 2004 Asian tsunami simply an unfortunate natural disaster as have happened untold times throughout human history?
I think I actually know where this picture was taken. There’s a bait shop outside of Maumee Bay, Ohio which had a sign like this:
This picture is heartbreakingly beautiful
I have so many quotes from Thomas Sowell that I have to add numbers to the end so it does not replace old files
I’m curious how that would sound in a record player
I think windmills are great. Wind turbines, on the other hand…
You can literally see the outline of the second place winner’s still intact junk. I would probably have less problem with biological men coming into women’s spaces if the tradeoff was that they became eunichs. They still would have biological advantages in sports though
Am I the only one who thinks Trump does not look like himself in this picture?
My guess is that the life sentence won’t be a very long one. There’s been a broader awakening trend I have been noticing, however. Beyond my antivax and antiwar sentiments gaining more traction, there’s a broader recognition of sexual trafficking, sexual blackmail, and Satanic sacrifice being an actual real thing that happens, especially among Hollywood elite. I’ve read that the baby oil Sean Combs liked so much was laced with GHB which when applied to the skin drugged the victims.
Are people finally waking up and ready to stop playing hero ball? We shall see.
if our struggle was hopeless . . .
https://youtu.be/yIO-WxvoXok?si=g4eYtk-cpLrzAr4i
Billy Strings - 10/05/2024 - Pine Knob Music Theatre, Clarkston, MI