Support the Living.

[JJsushi]

I can't imagine what it must be like to vacation during a disaster clean up process, yet life must go on.

 

 

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Tourists Return

To Damaged Coasts

Juxtaposition of Relief Efforts

And Sunbathers Is Jarring

As Nations Court Vacationers

 

 

 

By GORDON FAIRCLOUGH and MATT POTTINGER

Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

January 4, 2005; Page D1

 

DAYS AFTER the tsunami hit Phuket, Thailand, a Dutch tourist walked into the AquaLine dive shop on the island with an odd request: Could he please rent scuba gear so he could hunt for treasure and trinkets among the fishing boats sunk by the killer waves?

 

AquaLine's owners, Anchalee Nachiangnai and Alan Rooney, say they were nearly speechless. "I told him I wasn't renting out any equipment," Mr. Rooney says, dismissing the request as "morbid curiosity."

 

 

 

Little more than a week after the disaster, tourists are returning to the beaches on Phuket island off Thailand's Southern coast. But some of the contrasts on display yesterday were jarring. Americans played beach volleyball down the street from a shopping mall where customers drowned. Women sunbathed topless in areas where rescue workers last week recovered corpses. And bars with exotic dancers in the island's red-light district have reopened.

 

Tourism -- the lifeblood for many countries hit hardest by the Dec. 26 tsunami -- was also one of the industries damaged most by the disaster. But governments and tourist operations are moving quickly to help damaged hotels and other facilities reopen, and to reassure travelers.

 

Thai newspapers carried front-page photos of the prime minister making reassuring remarks to bathing-suit-clad Western beachgoers in Phuket. The Tourism Authority of Thailand is already trying to promote the country as a vacation destination in some Asian markets.

 

Across the Indian Ocean in Sri Lanka -- which suffered some 30,000 deaths from the tidal wave -- about 22 of 48 damaged hotels have already reopened, said Roshini Galappatti, a spokeswoman for the Sri Lankan Tourism Board in Colombo.

 

For countries like Sri Lanka and Thailand, the economics are simple: The money visitors will spend can help communities fund recovery efforts that could take years. Beach tourism accounts for about 40% of income generated by foreign visitors in Sri Lanka. Whether foreigners are deterred by images of death and destruction will be a big factor in determining the speed of the recovery.

 

The recent trend in international travel is toward increasingly quick recoveries in tourism after tragedies. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. heavily depressed trans-Atlantic air travel for many months, just as the 2002 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Southeast Asia hammered tourism there. But the economic fallout from the Madrid bombings last March was negligible. Spanish tourism numbers increased slightly for the year.

 

While overall bookings in Thailand are significantly down from normal, bookings remain strong in some areas hit by the tsunami. At the Amanpuri, one of Phuket's fanciest hotels, 75% of the rooms were full, the hotel said yesterday. (Significant portions of Phuket escaped harm; the Amanpuri wasn't damaged.)

 

Max E. Katz, chief financial officer of Swiss long-haul tour operator Kuoni Group, says his company's new bookings to the affected region are "just below the average" for this time of year, the peak period.

[sunbathers on a Thai beach as workers clear tsunami debris.]

Sunbathers on a Thai beach as workers clear tsunami debris.

 

 

 

However, he says travel executives in Europe and Asia are grappling with the ethics of sending people on holiday to grief-stricken towns. "Or is it almost an ethical obligation to go to those areas, spend money, and help local economies?" he said. "We have hoteliers calling us up from the Maldives saying, 'send us people' because they don't have anything else other than tourism on those islands."

 

On Phuket in Thailand, friends Laura Jennings and Laura Weenig of Austin, Texas, walked along Patong Beach in bikinis yesterday, Ms. Weenig clutching an iPod in her left hand. "We were super conflicted," says Ms. Jennings, who arrived in Phuket on Dec. 30 for a vacation with Ms. Weenig and 11 other friends and relatives.

 

"We had family meetings about it," she says. But after rounds of anguished discussion, "we decided the worst thing we could do was stay away." So, despite advice from the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok that they should avoid the area, they hopped on a plane, determined to use their vacation budget to help Phuket, Ms. Jennings says.

 

In the mornings, Ms. Jennings and her companions work. The first day, they joined with other volunteers to help clean a beach. Since then, they've been helping locals clean up. They have washed dishes at a hotel damaged by the waves. In the afternoon, they play at the beach.

 

Much of Phuket island was untouched by the tsunami waves. More than 80% of the island's hotel rooms are ready for business, according to the tourism authority.

 

Indeed, Ms. Weenig, a 29-year-old dog trainer, acknowledges that she hasn't seen the worst of the disaster, which Thai authorities say killed about 5,000 people and injured more than 10,000 others. But, she says, "people came back to New York again after 9/11. We're praying for the families of the missing. But at the same time, you have to support the living."

 

Still, against a backdrop of destruction and grief, some encounters between locals and determined holiday-makers can be awkward at best.

 

When the waves struck, 25-year-old hotel employee Jettana Homtour ran onto the beach to warn hotel guests at the resort where he worked. He grabbed one man -- who was videotaping the approaching tsunami -- and told him to flee. As the water poured in, Mr. Jettana climbed into the rafters of the thatch-roofed poolside bar where he worked, and pulled another guest up after him. "Every morning when I come to work, I'm afraid I'm going to find a body washed up on the beach," Mr. Jettana says.

 

But yesterday, Mr. Jettana was patiently delivering a drink order to a Swiss tourist lounging at the luxury resort in a gold-striped bikini-brief bathing suit: one Coca-Cola, with exactly two cubes of ice, since, the customer insisted, any more would make the soda too watery. The Swiss man, who declined to give his name, was at the resort with his wife when the tidal wave hit, but they escaped harm. Asked if they considered leaving, the man's wife said: "What's the point? We didn't lose anybody."

 

"Embassies tell people to go home, but if you do, what happens to the people here?" says Paul Hell, 52, of Switzerland. "We have responsibilities to our friends," he adds.

 

Wissanu Meethongjai, a local scuba instructor who lost a sister and niece in the tsunami, says he finds comfort in the hubbub of foreigners cavorting on beaches and prowling outdoor markets. "It makes me think that things are getting back to normal. And I need that right now," he says.