23. From Chiang Mai to Phuket and Khao Lak, a change of plans right after the tsunami

By Filipe Morato Gomes	Where is Chiang Mai?
I visited the attractive city of Chiang Mai before leaving civilization behind and immerse myself in a forest in Northern Thailand. But the tragic news about the tsunami made me change my travel plans. I went straight away to Phuket, where I saw paradisiacal sceneries turned into death fields. No word will ever describe the horror of what my eyes saw in Khao Lak, Thailand.

After visiting Bangkok and a short stop in historic village of Sukhotai, I decided to head further north aiming at getting to know the peaceful town of Chiang Mai and some o the ethnic minorities that live in the region. A long journey sitting on an old bus begging for retirement and which, without any big surprise, failed in the middle of the journey. By the time I didn't know yet that I would have to change my travel plans completely due to the calamity that fell upon the southern region of Thailand, Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka.

A young girl from Poe ethnic group wearing a traditional white dress used by single women only

Chiang Mai, by itself, is a very attractive town. Cosmopolitan, without the bustle of a great metropolis like Bangkok, and yet small enough to keep the charm of those tiny places where a traveller feels really cosy. And, on Sunday evening, in the weekly market which takes place in the old centre area, it was possible to get some handcrafts coming from nearby ethnic groups who sold them themselves. At the same time, it was possible to observe some of their costumes and traditions. After all, the main reason which had brought me to the north of Thailand.

So I decided to get away from civilization for some days. I found a genuine eco travel agency and entered a forest somewhere between Chiang Mai and Mai Sariang. We got to a village belonging to the Poe ethnic minority, which is a sub-group of the most populous Thai hill tribe - the Karen - and we were welcome with a certain kind of suspicion. Or perhaps it was just a careful distance which they were supposed to keep in the presence of strangers. However, once the ice was broken, everything turned out to be completely different. I will never know if it was because of the nice atmosphere around the fireplace or due to a bottle of rice wine that got empty there, or just owing to the normal period of time different people require to adapt them to any other's presence. Anyway, I started to know something else about the Poe people.

With the help of a translator-guide, I found out the village lives without a leader. Everyone has a word when it is necessary to make any decision. There is only a couple of male members of the community that, because they know how to read and write, are in charge of dealing with bureaucratic subjects in the capital of the province. Women are in charge of most household chores, including heavy tasks like carrying wood and water. As well as cooking, doing the washing and the cleaning, and looking after the family. Concerning men, their main job is the building up and the maintenance of their house and family. Apart from that, they hardly do anything else but smoking, chatting and drinking.

A street in Patong, Phuket, after the tsunami

As I was spending time in the village I realised that the Poe have got their very own values, habits and traditions, like most of the Thai ethnic group. Yet everything can quickly be about to change. I know I wasn't the first foreigner that slept in the balconies of one of the village houses. And for sue I wasn't the last one either. But the line that separates the advantages from the harmful aspects of that interaction is too tenuous. The money they get from housing the travellers has, like any coin, two distinct sides. If the older ones believe, for example, that their spirit may get stolen by a photo camera pointing to them, the children, on the other hand, having a natural curiosity, love posing and seeing their image on a digital camera. And so, the beliefs that have resisted to countless generations start to change in a moment. Anyway, everything seems now too superfluous when compared to what has happened then.

I was supposed to go from the north of Thailand to the neighbour Laos, and stay there for a couple of weeks. However a catastrophe fell over the south of Thailand and other countries in the region. I was in Vang Vieng, Laos, when I got to know about the gravity of the events. The tsunami had killed thousands of people. So I went straight to Phuket Island, Thailand, to work as a photojournalist together with a professional Portuguese journalist who had been sent there to report the disaster.

A missing baby, Phuket, Thailand

When I arrived in Phuket I found a terrible scenery. Never had my eyes seen such a terrifying scene. The destruction of long paradisiacal beaches as well as their hotels and resorts, turned into nothing due to the raging waters. The nauseous smell of death, coming from corpses that were piled all over the region of Khao Lak, 100 km north of Phuket. And the grief of the survivors, with their eyes staring at the ground, looking almost always in vain for a sign of their relatives or friends' life. Some of them may have found somebody alive but most people were just hoping to find a cadaver; their look was soaked from suffering and their heart was completely broken. I couldn't even imagine what was in the soul of those who tried to identify any dear relative, looking for in the middle of completely destroyed corpses who were lining in the gardens of some temples which were transformed into mortuary houses.

As the days went by, I realised that the seriousness of the situation in Phuket, in spite of the level of destruction, could not be compared to the one in some other places like Aceh in Indonesia, or Galle in Sri Lanka. I decided to move and it was to the former Ceylon that I headed then, without accurate directions, but aware that I was going to meet the unthinkable.

(originally written in Portuguese)

Author's note: if you can, do help tsunami survivors; NGOs still need volunteers in Sri Lanka and Indonesia for tsunami relief operations.

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