Surviving a Tsunami

In 2004 December 26th, a Tsunami hit the island Koh Phi Phi.

In order to explain this story, I am going to use the visual below. So basically, the teacher and his wife went out on a vacation to Thailand. He and his wife decided to take a small boat and go out paddling onto the beach. When they went to the rental guy they had pre-ordered the boat with the guy refused and said the tides were being weird. Mad, they came back in a few hours or the next day (I can’t remember). They took the boat out to the South of the island and were paddling in the kinda deep area. Then very quickly the water started to get lower and lower. They were at the edge of the shallow water and the boat was literally sitting on the sand. They were pretty confused. So they pushed it over the edge and into the deep water. When they had just about got settled in the boat they felt a big wave pass under them. The wave just kept going until they couldn’t see past it. It was the tsunami wave. Had they still been in the shallow sand they would’ve definitely gotten swept up by the wave and died. Instead, it passed under them. They waited out in the deep end for 3-4 hours without any food or water and the teacher wasn’t wearing a shirt so he was super burnt. They spent this time talking to fisher boats behind them. Then they decided to paddle back. There was a really weird energy in the water and they kept getting caught in whirlpools so this took a while. When they got on to the beach the teacher was concerned about the boat and not getting the deposit back. Dragging it all the way to the other side of the beach made no sense because that side was completely wrecked.  People from the balconies of the big hotel were yelling at them telling them to get off the beach to they made their way up the hill on the east side. When they came back down they helped those in need for the rest of the day before sleeping at the big hotel which was letting everyone sleep there. Their hotel was completely wiped out taking away al their belongings with them. He went around searching for injured people and people who needed help. he saw a lot of dead bodies. The total body count in that island was 3600. Someone had taken over and it was very organized and calm. He felt calm, numb and focussed. There weren’t any authorities resent till the next day. The next day they spent hanging around, helping out some more and waiting for the ferry which was only taking 200 people at a time of the island. He felt there was a lot of tension in the air when he and many others waited for the ferry to arrive and felt scared. When they got back, they were allowed to take a plane to Phuket. At Phuket different countries had set up booths…the American booth didn’t show up for a while which was frustrating. They finally got a temporary passport and went back. Years later they visited. It is now a lot more commercial and has been built bigger. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QrKCZLp2pXNnXpThlO_iJyA8WXxafbG9EYKvl7_Nfek/edit?usp=sharing

Takeaways:

• Life is short
• Third world countries are capable of being organized and
• Miracles do exist
• I enjoyed this talk because his experience was so unique. It would be really interesting to write something about because the audience would be gaining new and rare information. What I mean by this is out of all the talks I attended, this perspective is probably one the least number of people would have already heard a similar story to. Furthermore, it is a very happy, victorius, feel-good kind of story.