Wilkommen nach Khoa Lak!

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I've never seen as many germans in my life! And remember I have been to Germany more than a few times! This is really the hotspot for german tourists it seems. Along the roadsides you will see more german languages signs than english ones!

........but enough about the Germans...Khao Lak, I like this place too! Sure, it isn't a backpacker hangout and like a lot of other places I have been, its low season and so you are more likely to see tumbleweed (or a German) on the streets here at the moment than you are fellow backpackers. But still I like this place! They have been the smiliest, most talkative people that I have come across in Thailand to date and the beach here is really nice.

Khao Lak unfortunately made world wide news for all the wrong reasons in December 2004 when it was one of the worst hit areas in Thailand by the St. Stephens day Tsunami. If you can still remember those amateur video clips of people been helplessly engulfed by rising waters as it poured through the streets of towns and villages.....well inevitably some of that footage would have come from Khao Lak. The living memorial is a police ship that was docked in the bay that morning. It was sweeped over a kilometre inland to the place it now rests. And when you walk from the ship to the beach you get an idea of the strenght the sea must have had that day. The main street of Khao Lak and a number of large resorts lie between the ocean and where the boat landed so It really must have had massive force to push a boat that size that far inland through such a built up area.
The bar I was having a drink in last night had 25 people sitting for christmas dinner that year...on the 27th only 6 remained alive.
I passed a marker 200 metres from the sea today. It showed waters reaching a height of 5m that day......nobody could have survived that...quickly surveying the surrounding landscape, higher ground and higher buildings were simply too far away. While I was there its memory was likened to that of the Titanic for Irish people in that its memory will live on in the people of the area for generations to come.

Walking onto the beach and wading in the waters is somewhat of a sombreing experience. Sure this place has recovered and is now a fully operational and popular detination once again (and rightly so) but it is nonetheless strange to stand on the beaches of Khao Lak and remember the people that once lay lifeless where my feet now stand.

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Photos

Police Boat 813
The sea (where the other picture was taken is over 1km straigh ahead)