Tsunami tourism
Loh Dalum Bay, Koh Phi Phi Don, Thailand. This beach was submerged under a wall of water, reportedly 6.5 metres high.
Ton Sai Bay, Koh Phi Phi Don. This is the beach from which one memorable tsunami photo was taken, of tourists standing further out on the empty sea bed while looking with curiosity at the 3 metre-high tsunami wave that was about to kill them.
Koh Hong. All locations along Thailand's Andaman coastline that are populated by people now have planned evacuation routes in the event of another tsunami.
Koh Phi Phi Leh. These floating tremor sensors in the water are part of the tsunami detection and early warning system.
The tsunami warning system, Koh Hong. All beaches along Thailand's Andaman coastline now have these tall towers which will warn people of an incoming wave.
Koh Phi Phi Don. The isthmus between the two beaches was once the location of Ton Sai, a village filled with close-set homes and other buildings, all destroyed. These are new homes situated as far back from the beach as possible, and there are now restrictions on how close to the beaches anything can be built.
Ton Sai gift shop, Koh Phi Phi Don. I've noticed that whenever a hurricane strikes one of the south eastern United States, some feeble-minded entrepreneur inevitably cranks out t-shirts with tough-sounding slogans like 'I Survived the Big One' or 'The Day the Bitch Came to Breakfast'.
It may be a few years after the event, but there's no such bad taste in evidence on Koh Phi Phi, where possibly up to 4,000 people died that morning. This t-shirt shows the two back-to-back beaches on Koh Phi Phi Don which were completely submerged under incoming waves from both directions, and which collided over the isthmus in between, destroying everything underneath (6-minute video).
La La, post-op katoey and tour guide, Paradise Island, Krabi. La La was on Koh Hong when the tsunami wave struck on 26 December 2004 and she had to evacuate around 50 injured people of the 200 on the island at the time. Koh Hong's best lagoon is fairly well protected by karsts further out to sea, nevertheless four people died there that morning.
Tsunami memorial, Koh Hong.
Koh Hong. When the tsunami wave reached land, half a dozen wooden boats were washed about 100m into the nearby forest, and are being left there to decompose naturally.
Though there is now a tsunami museum further north at Khao Lak, there is still no official memorial to the thousands of victims of the tsunami in Thailand. The best unofficial memorial is Police Boat 813 at Khao Lak: it rests where it was left by the wave, nearly two kilometres inland on the other side of the highway.