<b>02 01 05
Kuraburi, Southern Thailand.</b>

11PM. At Phuket Airport it's business as usual. The touts are out in force, displaying their usual cut throat charm and it takes me some time to get a taxi to take me to Kuraburi, 200 km to the North. Eventually I ride in a brand new Toyota with two guys in the front across Phuket.

No signs of the Tsunami but we never hit the beaches. Several signs tell us the road through Kao Lak is closed. Lots of people died in Khao Lak, many of them foreigners in flash resorts. Khao Lak is a series of wide bays, very open to the sea with barely an incline. Just before the resort town, we are stopped by the cops for the first time.
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5 uniformed men shine torches into the car, hands on their holsters. They don't just look aggressive. They don't want to let us pass. The drivers want to turn, they are shit scared. Afetr a while of silent negotaitions between the two parties, I shout out the window, 'Pom Pen Farang'. I am a foreigner.

The cops jerk back and the torches wash over me and my bag. We pass. Khao Lak looks like Brooklyn in Escape from New York. Sorry about the cheap analogy, but at night all you see are rows of ruined buildings and small groups of police sitting round burning oil drums.

The wave washed right across the main road in some places. Trashed upturned cars still littler the road side. We pass a refugee collection centre and I see a few wild eyed young farang. Later we pass a collection centre for the locals. Hundreds of photographs adorn the walls of a white tent. Missing.


<b>03 01 05
Kuraburi, Wat Samakitham.</b>

The Moken sea gypsies I have come to visit at this temple in Southern Thailand are more dishevelled than usual. They are lingering in a big hall, surrounded by stacks of donations. Most of these are clothes, something the Moken have limited use for. Thier boats are gone, their houses are gone. They need tools to rebuild and boats to be mobile. A Moken who has no boat is barley a Moken.

The Wat is on the main road. The Moken kids are playing right by the road. Most of them don't know cars.

The Moken have to leave the mainland. Every day here, despite the generosity of the temple, means more contamination with modern Thailand. More pressure to remain on the mainland and learn the Thai language properly. But the Moken are so laid back that they are easily influenced. One NGO has approached them offering a lot of money, if the community remain on the mainland. Should they choose to return to their islands, there'll be no money. It's like this. Ais is a business, even during tsunamis.

Sarang, a boat driver who saved 12 tourists from the wave, tells me, 'Most of us want to go back. It only takes us three days to build a house on the beach in Surin. At least there we can live as we like.'

<b>04 01 05
 Ko Surin National Park</b>

I visited Surin marine park in 1999, met the Moken and recorded their songs which were later released on a Topic Rec CD in the UK. The park then was one of the most idyllic, remote and unspoilt places I had come across in Thailand. Great coral, beautiful evergreen forest, little garbage, few tourists, modest facilities, hard to reach.

From a distance, the islands haven't changed a bit. The tsunami washed right across them but barely a tree seems to have snapped. The forest looks fine. Later I find out  most of the coral is ok too. But all manmade infrastructure is gone.

The park headquarters looks like a battlefield. The buildings have mostly collapsed. All that remains of the restaurant is the foundations. Burmese fishermen have been hired in to demolish what's left and burn the lot.

On the Moken beach there is no longer anything resembling a village. Every single hut and boat has been taken by the storm. A lone dog leads us into the hills where we find a missing Moken, the only Moken casualty of the wave.

The Moken knew. When the water went out and the birds went mad, they collected as many tourists as they could and led them into the jungle. Funny how a paradise beach of which most of us can only dream, can appear as a total nightmare. The Moken culture in Thailand is gone, what's left are its people, shell shocked, homeless and destitute.

<a href="http://www.cusri.chula.ac.th/andaman/en" target ="new">Donate to the Moken</a>