<< July<< A Sort of Blog about Neung (August) >>September>>
Before and After Pictures of Baan Nam Kem and Khao Lak
David Johnson brought my attention to these pictures of Nam Kem before and after the tsunami. If you scroll about halfway down the page you will see images labeled Takua Pa, Thailand. The close up pictures (the zoom area) show Nam Kem itself. We have not yet had the opportunity to ask Sanam and Panya where their house was. The camp that they are now living in is near the bottom right of the larger map, although it naturally post-dates these images.
These pictures, meanwhile, show Khao Lak before and after the tsunami (they are misleadingly labeled Phuket). The resort where Somsri worked and died is about halfway up, right on the coast.
13/8/2005
No News is, Well, No News
We are again regrouping in Singapore, having spent the last two weeks in Thailand. We got back yesterday, and we return in three days. We took Neung to the dentist for another couple of fillings, and otherwise did our usual routine of taking her to and from school. The papers are still working their way through the court process, so we have no more news of that. Our lawyers are coming down from Bangkok next week to check on the process.
There is some good news, though: construction has finally begun on Sanam and Panya's new house. We didn't get a chance to see it on this trip, but we will take a look next week. As I have said before, it is likely that we will still want to help them add on to this house and furnish it.
13/8/2005
Just Because
I used to have the following photo on the "Would You Like to Help?" page, but I decided to replace it with a picture of Sanam and Panya, and a picture of the plants that Sanam has been growing. But, but ... it is one of my favorites. So here it is.
14/8/2005
It All Comes Back to Football in the End
Warning: The following post may be incomprehensible if you do not understand the tribal rivalries in English soccer.
One of my brothers supports Liverpool Football Club, as does one of his sons. They are not the team that I support, but I have always quite liked them as a club, and I certainly cheered loudly when they won the Champions League earlier this year.
The city of Liverpool, though, has two major football clubs (the obligatory joke of Liverpool supporters here is "yes, Liverpool, and Liverpool Reserves"). The other club, Everton, has long been a poor relation, with neither the fame nor the glory of Liverpool FC.
On a recent trip to Singapore Jill bought Neung her first replica football uniform. The only surprise here, for those who know Jill, is that it took her this long. It so happened that the only uniform available in Neung's size was an Everton kit. Happily, this is appropriate for Neung, because Everton are sponsored by Chang Beer, whose logo shows two elephants, and Neung really likes beer
elephants.
Coincidentally, Everton were playing in Thailand at the time, in a small friendly tournament called the Premier League Asia Trophy (the teams involved were Bolton, Manchester City, Everton, and the Thailand national team, in case you are interested, and Bolton beat Thailand in the final). Even more coincidentally, several Everton players made a visit to Baan Bang Muang School, which is where Neung attends kindergarten. We knew nothing of this, unfortunately, until after the fact; there was no school that day, so Neung was with us in Phuket; and in any case I strongly suspect that kindergarten girls were not particularly encouraged to attend.
Everton FC has donated funds to rebuild homes in Nam Kem, to build a soccer stadium at the school, and to establish a soccer clinic there. And for that, they have earned a place in my affections, and I will cheer them on -- at least until the team that I support make it back into the Premiership. Sorry, Mike and Phil, but that's just how it is.
As for whether Neung is destined to be the next Nongkran Petchpoonsap -- well, you can be the judge.
Update (26/9/2005): I may have been too optimistic when I wrote that posting. At the moment Everton FC are at the bottom of the Premiership, and the team that I support have had a somewhat shaky start to their season as well. It might be that I will only be able to support Everton up to the time when they join the team that I support in the Championship League...
14/8/2005
What We Know
1. That, before the morning rush hour, it only takes twenty minutes to get from our apartment to Changi Airport.
2. Where to find the best coffee in Terminal 1.
3. How to hide your coffee if you want to bring it on board in violation of Tiger Airways "no external food policy".
4. Which are the best seats on the plane.
5. How to beat the crowd from the plane and be among the first at Phuket immigration, thus saving anything from 15 to 45 minutes.
6. That I can collect the rental car within ten minutes of landing, which is almost exactly the same amount of time as it takes the baggage to arrive.
Knowing all these things meant that exactly four hours after getting out of bed this morning in Singapore, we had had a decent cup of coffee, done an hour's work, and were enjoying breakfast at the Phuket Marriott.
29/8/2005
Now that the Magic is Gone
We never guessed how familiar the landscape would become.
I have long ago lost count of the number of times that I have driven up from Phuket to Khao Lak and on towards Takua Pa. I know the road intimately now, and it is hard to recall how alien it seemed back in January, when we first came down from the headland and into the devastation of Khao Lak. It is not that I have forgotten the destruction exactly; I can still conjure up the pictures in my mind quite clearly. It is more that each time I drive along this road, there has been a little bit more reconstruction and so normality returns, little by little.
Near the town of Khuk Khak, the road turns inland slightly, and we drive through countryside that was out of the tsunami's reach. A couple of weeks ago, for the first time, we turned off the road here and drove to the coast to look for the Sofitel Magic Lagoon Resort. This is where Somsri worked. It apparently was a beautiful resort; certainly it was set by a wonderful and secluded beach.
The Magic Lagoon was one of the hardest hit of all the hotels in Thailand. About 200 people died there: around 150 guests and 50 staff. So far, they have done nothing to rebuild it. It sits there, ruined and condemned, with warnings that entry is dangerous and illegal. Looking at it, I felt much the way I did that first day in Khao Lak, finding it almost incomprehensible that mere water had caused this destruction, ripping tiles from the roofs of three story buildings and demolishing concrete walls. In places entire side walls had been removed by the wave, leaving the guestrooms exposed as in a doll's house. I try to picture what it was like on that cruel morning, but I am glad to say that my imagination fails me.
John Gorka has a song about the Pacific theater in World War II, where he writes about "islands that were paradise / and were paradise no more". This is how it feels to me. There are so many perfect days here in Khao Lak, when the sky and the sea vie all day to produce the more beautiful shade of blue, until, the question unresolved, the sun sets into the ocean in a frame of purple and pink clouds. Yet this beauty can never lose its subtext of tragedy for me. I am glad that others are returning to this wonderful place, but I cannot enjoy it, not really.
Last week Sanam, Panya and Neung came to a meeting at the Merlin Hotel with representatives from Accor, the company that used to manage the Sofitel. Accor has been, I think, a good and generous company in the aftermath of the tsunami (I have met and spoken to several people from the company over the last few months). It has worked hard to ensure that the relatives of those who died have received their life insurance payments, and it has made additional ex gratia payments of its own. It is trying hard to balance short-term and long-term needs of survivors. The meeting at the Merlin was to make payments to Neung and the other children who lost parents at the Sofitel.
Me, I end up with a peculiar kind of survivor guilt. I see these children who have lost parents and these parents who have lost children, and I think about the unfamiliar road I am now traveling, and I and realise that while the tsunami stole so much from so many families, it did the exact opposite for Jill and myself. So please don't misunderstand: if I record that I cannot enjoy a beautiful beach resort as once I might have, I do not imply that this is a terrible thing. It is just a fact that I am putting down; a minor observation compared to the fact that I am that strange strange person -- someone for whom the tsunami was a lucky event.
30/8/2005
She's Four
She's four. She does cute things. I don't intend to catalogue them, and anyway I suspect that for most of them you have to be there. I know, for example, that doing any kind of justice to her parody of her own tantrums is well beyond my prose capabilities.
The poor kid has to spend far too much time in the car with us, and our music collection -- surprise, surprise -- does not contain much that is aimed at the four-year old segment. Of the few exceptions buried in our i-tunes library, she particularly clamors for Tom Paxton's "Goin' to the Zoo" and Tom Lehrer's "L-Y". Otherwise we look for songs with simple singable choruses; she likes "Yellow Submarine", for example .
Meanwhile her English is coming along, to the point where she will often recognize words or phrases from the songs that we play. Usually she is right; occasionally she is confused. Even if you did really need to be there, allow me one indulgence, and try to let your imagination conjure up the image of a four-year old Thai girl singing along enthusiastically with Springsteen.
"Booooorn -- How are you S A"
30/8/2005