On the 26th of December 2004 at 00.58 UCT an earthquake occurred off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, with a magnitude of 9.1. It was third highest earthquake ever recorded. It triggered a series of deadly Tsunami's, that killed over 230,000 people, in 14 countries, most of them still in their beds sleeping unaware of the 100ft waves racing towards them. It is probably the deadliest natural disaster to have occurred in recorded history.
I was traveling when this disaster occurred, but I was nowhere near it. I was 25; on my first ever backpacking trip; with 3 of my closet friends around the world. We were thousands of miles away on that Boxing Day morning, living in our own utopia on a remote Fujian island, completely cut off and unaware that part of the world was falling to pieces across the ocean. It wasn't until a week later when we landed in Auckland, and I sat having my breakfast in a hipster cafe, that I was confronted with a newspaper; it's front page covered with washed up dead bodies on a beach, that I realised the true horror of what had happened. As we continued our travels up into Asia, stories drifted around of the big Tsunami, sometimes from people who had been there, (And some of them with so little tac that they describe the whole event as if they had survived the Big Dipper at Blackpool and had got T-shirt to prove it)!
Two months later I found myself alone in Bangkok. My travel companions had all slowly, but surely left me because of money, home sickness or where missing their boyfriend. I on the other hand had no urge to go home, as I've never really suffered from the home sickness bug. I decided instead, that it was time to see this terrible event, that had haunted most of my trip, with my own eyes. After a lot of searching I finally found a bus and boat that would take me to the island of Phi Phi, one of the worst hit areas in Thailand and a place that I heard was still crying out for help and volunteers. I sat on the near empty boat, on my own heading to Phi Phi, contemplating what I would find there. It was one of the most anxious journeys I think I have ever taken. I stood on deck as the boat motored into the harbour. The first thing I recall there were no trees. The greenery of what we invision for a tropical island was void. All that was left were snapped off trucks and sometimes not even that. As we neared the harbour I saw groups of divers rising and descending again in the water, as people shouted instructions from the pier. I found it all very odd that people were scuba diving at a time like this. It was only later that I learnt that these people were also volunteers, who were diving to help try free the still trapped bodies caught under rumble in the sea. Once on land the true extent of the destruction became apparent. The pathway on which I walked away from the harbour was piled high on either side like mountains with debris: broken doors, motorbikes, and electrical wires all poked out from the mass. It was like something out of a apocalypse movie. I wandered for a bit to find a guest house that had not been destroyed and that was still open, eventually finding one run by a little old Thai lady, who informed me that the volunteers had a meeting every night in a bar in the centre to discuss what needed doing and to allocate jobs. Later that night I find my self sat at the bar surrounded by a mass of volunteers listening to what progress has been made and what needs doing. I'm feeling slightly shy and awkward as I'm there on my own, so compensate this by being very enthusiastic, as I volunteer myself for the first task that is requiring people. It's beach clear up. The girl sat beside me volunteers too. She looks at me and says,
"Are you here on your own too? Have you just arrived?"
I tell her yes to both questions. She is in the same circumstances too.
"We should go and get a beer!" She says.
This is how I met Mel. Mel was an Australian with fair skin that probably was not suited to hot weather and strawberry blonde flowing locks that fell to her waist. She possessed a confidence and sureness in life that I lacked. I instantly liked her. We walked to the beach, but the only way we knew we had arrived there, was by the the sound of the waves, as there was nothing but total blackness, apart from a small light, shining a little further up. We walked towards it to find a shack with a Thai guy selling beers from a cool box. This was Ya Ya. He told us his story. He was selling beers to help his cousin who had, had a bar on the beach, that had been destroyed. His cousin had also lost his wife and 2 young daughters and many other members of their family. I didn't know what to say. But inside my heart bled. We sat and drank beers brought from him, as it was a little constellation that this would help them in some tiny way.
The next day before I started my volunteer duties, I, as one of the new people, was to be shown round the devastation of the small town. The climax of which ended at the once Jewel in the crown; a five star hotel that had taken pride of place on the beach. The luxury beach huts which had lined the sand where all gone apart from remnants of two that barely held together. The most casualties on the island were the guests of these huts, swept out to sea as they slept in their beds unaware of the tidal wave of horror heading towards them. The main structure of the hotel itself was nothing but a shell with damp rooms, filled with sand, water and rotting furniture piled in corners. It was a sombering sight.
I'm taken to where I am to start beach clear up. I realise it's the beach where we were the night before as I can see the shack where we drank beers from, but this time instead of a mass of black as my view there is the most beautiful bay and beach, with green hills, and turquoise sea. It's kind of breath taking even with the devastation which can still be seen on beach. The lead volunteer gives us a pile of black bin liners and begins:
"We have been clearing the beach a lot but every day new rubbish from the tsunami washes in. If you find anyone's passports or ID's you must hand them in. Dead bodies don't really wash up anymore but we did have one the other week, so you must be aware to expect it. Put everything in the bags and pile them down there."
I look a bit like a rabbit in the head lights after her speech and stand there for a while with the bin liner in my hand, until I realise everyone else has already started clearing and I then I know that's what I must do. I remember it being such a weird experience. For the most, it was just general rubbish: food wrappers, broken wood, wires, things you couldn't recognise anymore, but then, every now and again some thing would turn up and it would make you question, just throwing it into a bag of rubbish without a thought. A shoe, a item of clothing; books. Then one day I see some thing and it makes me freeze in my tracks. I pick it up. It's a small teddy bear. A child's toy. It's damp and rotting. One eye is missing. I look at it and think of who it belonged too? I wondered if the child was still alive? I felt my eyes start to fill with water and then I did what I did with every other item I picked up, I threw it into a bin liner. I only did beach clear up for a week. I found it too hard mentally. I thought about that rotting teddy bear for a long time. I still do sometimes now, and what happened to all those bin bags I filled and piled high everyday, full of people's lives.
During our days of beach clear up me and Mel, would rest and take drinks from Ya Ya at the shack. We grew to know him well and so we met Ben. Ben was Ya Ya's cousin, who had lost the bar and everything. When I say we met Ben, we didn't really meet Ben. We met a man totally devastated and a shell of his former self who would be drunk most of the time, but then no one could blame him. I always found it hard being round Ben. I never knew what to say to him. What can you say to some one that has lost everything. Mel was much better at it than me and took an active interest in Bens plight and how to help. Mel was not the only one either. Ben already had a good group of people around him trying help him start rebuild his life and bar for him. There was an English couple Rob and Tash; then there was a crazy Irish guy Deco and a lovely German girl (who now all these 10 years later, name escapes me). They had already started between them, to put together the startings of a frame work for the new bar. After beach duty, Mel found us new work sign painting for businesses and as I've always been a painter, I couldn't have been happier. We picked up another members of the group, Charlotte the girl with the chin piercing; Andrew the journalist doing a story on phi Phi who I would later stay with in Hong Kong, and Bec's a beautiful blonde gap year student, who we found trying to sunbathe on the beach. Deco made, me and Bec's, go and wake him up most mornings for work, as he would always oversleep, as he had usually got wasted the night before. We would wake him and he would always have a beer and pre-rolled joint beside his bed, which he lit as he got out of bed and say "There's nothing better than being awaken by two tall blondes in the morning!" While drinking his beer and recharging for the day. So this became my life for a couple of weeks. This weird little community among the chaos. I always remember out of all the times I have travelled, this experience and the people I met, being one of the most happiest (even with all the sadness) and influential experiences of my life and has always had a lasting effect on me. Just before I left, Mel painted a sign for the new bar. It was to be called the Sunflower bar!
In times gone by this would of been the end of this story, but through the power of modern technology, we volunteers connected again through social media which had not exsisted when we first met, and so we saw each other's lives from a far. I kept in contact with Mel now and again as she always had the great trait of being an extremely social person. I had left her behind in Phi Phi where she had stayed on to help and I saw over time she kept going back, and then back again, and then there were photos of her and Ben and then the announcement: she was pregnant with Ben's baby! It was the craziest most exciting news. They had a baby girl. She was called Mekhala, after the Thai Godess of the sea. A poitiant name indeed. I watch her grow over the years through photos and she made me so happy, this little girl I never had met, because she was something beautiful that had grown out of such sorrow and destruction.
It's 10 years later. I find myself leaving Australia, and I have a flight to Bangkok with a week to spare before I had to go to Sri Lanka for work. F**k it! I'm going back to Phi Phi. It seems like the right time all these years on. I catch a flight to Krabi and realise I've missed the last boat to the island and find myself walking round Krabi town late at night homeless with nowhere to stay. There have only been three occasions in all my time travelling where I have actual thought I might have to sleep on the street. This is one of them. Everywhere I try is full and I put my backpack down in the street in despair. A tuk tuk driver takes pity on me and takes me to a friends to stay out of town. It's a dump and I probably paid too much but it's better than the street. He picks me up early the next morning and takes me to the port. I catch an over crowded boat that we are herded on to like cattle. A very different experience to the first time I caught a boat there. I sit crunched up, for over an hour feeling rather dissolllioned by the people that surround me until a glimpse of the island comes into my view and I feel a massive wave of emotion that I didn't know was there, sweep over me. I'm back! We pull near to the harbour and I feel a sense of fear of that harbour, of seeing divers swimming around in it again, but there long gone. In fact everything is long gone. I don't recognise anything. The debris is replaced by modern concrete buildings and tourist traps. I disembark thinking I would know my route so well, but I know nothing! It's a maze of cheap bars, restruants and tattoo parlours. The only thing I know is to head straight to the other side to my bay, to my beach. No matter what time changes, it can't change that? I finally find it. The view is still the same. It's still beautiful and it still has a hold on my heart, but what surrounds it is not the same! Bucket bars! Pool parties! Drunken tourists! I came here last, at such a bleak time, but at least it had some natural respect for the place. This is not the case now. In some weird kind of way it seems just as bleak here. I head to the shoreline but I can't see where the sunflower is! I know this place! Where is it? I'm so confused! Has it gone? But I'd contacted Mel to tell her I was coming and she said she was there at the sunflower. It must be here? I ask a local. They tell me to keep heading down the beach and then when I had just stopped believing it still exists, the past reappears to me. The half Thai boats as seats centred around a bar, but now they have a roof over them and so much more. I dump my back pack down but I can't see Mel. I go over to a Thai lady at the bar and say I'm looking for Mel.
"I'm Carly? Mel's Friend" I say
"Carly! Mel's friend! So excited!" She says and rushes up the stairs.
A couple of minutes later Mel comes down the stairs. She doesn't really look any different from when I saw her ten years ago and strangely enough it doesn't feel any different either. As she hugs me it feels like I just saw her yesterday. I suddenly feel completely at home. I tell her I'm going to stay at a guest house but Mel insist's I stay with them, if I can stand it? It's a simple bed, with a mosquito net, in the storage room. She tells me the roof leaks when it rains and it's very unglamorous, but I couldn't be happier because between living next to the storage supplies and a leaking roof, I'm looking out over my beach, that bay, that beautiful hipnotic view that I still love just as much 10 years ago. For me this bed is priceless. I unpack my stuff and head down stairs and Mel introduces me to Mekhala. She very beautiful. It feels weird to meet her in person as I feel like I've known her for so long but I don't know her at all. Mel tells her our story but she still looks on me as a stranger. She does tell me the name of the stray kitten she has adopted though: Dog Mai ban. I think it meant flower house in Thai?
I awake in the morning surrounded by storage boxes, a mosquito net and Dog mai ban scratching at my toes. Looking beyond that, there is my beautiful beach. I couldn't be happier. It occurs to me quite early on that Mel has her hands full. Not only has she built the bar; she's running it as well and it's a full time occupation. I decide to head to the beach to keep out of the way. I don't stray too far because, as soon as I head out of the sunflower it turns into foreign terrority for me. It's funny that my beach feels so foreign to me now, as all those years ago I knew it so well! There are cheap bars and the worst kind of tourists everywhere. I hate them! I hate them for stupidity and irgnorance! "People died on this beach! This is the beach ten years ago I threw people's lives into bin bags!" I scream to myself. I calm myself. They are not to know. It's not there fault. I'm sunbathing for a while, when I'm disturbed by a screech of laugher next to me. It's Mekhala and her very cute Thai cousin, Champoo. Mekhala starts talking to me, no holes barred (she has lost her shyness towards me) and I feel a sudden connection with her. She asks me to help her and Champoo into the water with their giant inflatable turtle and a motherly instinct in me doesn't just help them but spends all day playing in the water with them, having the most amazing time. So much so I burn my shoulders because I forget about the sun. So this becomes my days, back in Phi Phi. I play and connect with Mekhala. I put her to bed when Mel is too busy working the bar, and we talk about everything and anything while Dog Mai Ban scratches our feet while we chat. I feel very happy. Life has come full circle. I don't really leave the Sunflower while I'm there. For me the rest of the island has become an estranged relative. Only the sunflower holds onto the same energy and love, of what I first encountered on that island. It would be easy to say the westerns have ruined the island but as I have found in life, everything is a two way thing and the Thai's have let them, ruin it with their own greed for money rather than respecting their own natural beauty. I feel angry at them for ruining this beautiful island. Life is no fairytale and nor is this story. I don't believe in fairytales and I'm sure Mel doesn't either. We are too stronger women for that. Ben will always have his demons from the Tsunami and everything Mel has built up for herself and her daughter could be taken away from them any moment as Mel has no rights under Thai law being a foreigner, but what does matter is that little part of beach, on a little island in Thailand, that holds a special place in our hearts, and always will till the day we die. I hope to see Mel and Mekhala in 10 years time and it feel like yesterday.
I said my farewells to Mel and Mekhala the night before I left, as I was catching the ferry early in morning. It was better that way as I'm not very good at goodbyes even though I've said far too many of them in my life. I walked along my beach that morning and no one was around like all those years ago and then suddenly all the ghosts came flooding back to me and I thought about the teddy bear with one eye and thought about crying. Then I thought about about Mekhala and then I realised new life can spring from the most awful of stuations and life will always go on. I decided then it was time to bury all those bin liners of people's lives, there and then.
