Day 366: I Can't Even Imagine

Michael, Pauline, and I slept in today and spent a good part of the day just lounging around. I was browsing around on the internet on Michael's computer and came across one of the many home videos taken by terrified tourists during the SE Asia Tsunami. Being in Korea I did not see any of the media images from that disaster. Today was literally the first time I had seen any video footage, and it was completely shocking. We ended up watching like 20 different videos taken from different people and each of them were frightening and unbelievable. I can't even imagine what it must've been like to have gone through that first hand.

Well here's one way you can try. Below is an email telling the story of two Canadians who happened to be on Ko Phi Phi when the waves came flooding in. I don't know them personally (they're friends of friends...) but it's a terrifying read. Just reading it made me shudder with horror at what that must've been like to go through. Check it out:


Hello everyone

Where to start... we are alive.... Thank-you to everyone for your e-mails and support through everything. It really has meant a lot to know we have so many people that care so much. So sorry we havent been able to email sooner but we havent had email access as all systems were down in Thailand and then when we got home hotmail was down!! We have been through so much and im sure will still be going through some difficult times ahead but having our friends and family near is making it a lot easier.I'll try to explain in detail what we have been through but its hard because the things we have seen are undescribable and incomphrensible even to us.

We were on Koh Phi Phi about 15m from the beach in our hotel room. I had booked a beach bungalow but they screwed up our reservation and ended up putting us in the concrete hotel in the back of the resort. Thankgod they did or we probably wouldnt be here today. We had just gotten back from breakfast and had our bags all packed as we were just about to checkout and catch the 11:30 ferry to another island. Because we were about to leave we both had our passports and money in our pockets.

I heard a noise like a washing machine was overflowing went out in the hallway to look (the hallways were exterior hallways open to outside) I looked down the hallway and all I saw was a man carrying his two children running towards me with a wall of water behind him. We were on the second floor of the building. I turned to Marty who was in the room still and told him toget out and run.We started running down the hallway and were then swept buy the wave which carried us the rest of the way down the hall. We got to our feet again and had
water to our chest.We then held on to the railing and braced ourselves as the second wave hit which came to the same level as the first. The building was shaking and half of it collapsed behind us,including our room with all of our stuff. About 2 minutes later thewater retreated quite a bit and we tried to walk back to our room but it was gone.

By this point we were scared shitless, we had no idea what it was until someone told us that there had been an earthquake earlier and it was a tsunami. There were people freaking out all around us, bodies everywhere and injured people just hystarical. I remember getting very angry and thinking no this isnt how Im going to die. It was beyond scary it was absolutely terrifying and it was weird how we just immediately went into survivor mode. We then managed to get to the third floor of another building by men who were pulling people over the railings. After that we tried to see where we could escape to but all of our exits were blocked by water or destruction.There were bodies floating all around us as we looked down to the ground. We couldnt help anyone because the water was so high still and we couldnt get down from the building. The feeling of having people screaming and looking up to you for help and not being able to was so incredibly hard.

More waves kept coming but not as high and they gradually decreased.We then climed a tree and got to the roof of a three story building. We stayed there for about 2 hours until it was safe to come down and we knew that the water wasnt coming as high as before. We then went into all the rooms of the building and got as much food, water and clothes that we could find. By this point we were with fourNorwegians and one English girl. One of the Norwegians had a severe leg injury and we had to carry him out of the building. The English girl was also very badly cut up and had a fractured knee.

We climbed through all of the rubble, bodies, limbs and destruction as the entire island had been completely flattened, most of the buildings were made of wood so only some of the concrete buildings were still standing. We walked across the beach to higher ground and found a resort half way up a mountain with bungalows, where marty kicked in the door of one bungalow which had 2 beds were we laid the injured people we were with. At this point it was almost sunset.There were people everywhere anxiously waiting for something. We noticed helicopters and jets flying by which was a good sign since we didnt know if anyone knew about it or how big this catastrophe was. We then heard about an earthquake which made us realize why there was a tsunami.

At night fall we carried the injured Norwegian down to the helicopter landing landing zone which was a tennis court so that he could be evacuated but he ended up going on a boat and found out later that he made it to a hospital. The smell of the landing zone that night was terrible...So in this bungalow that we broke in was a couple of backpacks were we found some dry clothes and other stuff. We assumed that the people who were in this bungalow died but they obviously werent when they came back. We felt bad because we were wearing their clothes!!! That night was a looooong night. We couldnt sleep because of the fact that we had to sit outside since the beds were too bloody to sleep on. We also couldnt because the helicopters kept coming every 20-30mins to evacuate the injured. We got eaten aliveby mosquito's.FUCKIN MUSQUITO'S MADE US CRAZY!!! God, I hate musquitoes.At sunrise we decided to make our way down to the beach so that we could get the hell out of there! There were lots of people waiting for the ferries which were coming quite regularily. We managed to get on a ferry after about a 2 hour wait.

We then arrived in Krabi and were still with the injured English girl so we got in an ambulance with her and went straight to the hospital. The hospital was complete chaos. Injured people everywhere but somehow they seemed to have it quite well organized. We cleaned our own cuts up and then got on a bus to a shelter that a hotel had set up. They had converted the conference rooms into a shelter with blankets clothes food and water. Because we had our passports and money with us we were able to get a room.

We met up with the English girl who ended up having about 30 stitches in different places and a fractured knee. She had also lost herboyfriend so we had her stay with us until her Father came from England then next morning to get her. So we then got on a plane to Bangkok where the Thai government put us up in hotels for 2 nights and then got on the first plane back to Canada that we could.So now we are in Toronto. We have both been to the hospital here, Marty has a torn meniscus and some cuts. Kelly has an insane amount of Mosquito bites, very badly bruised legs and arms and a bad cold. We are extremely tired too. Weve been busy seeing all of our family and friends and we really appreciate everything everyone has done for us.Thanks again for all your love and support it means a lot to us. We hope to get back to Japan in a couple of weeks but have lost our phones (alongwith everything we had) so everyone please send us your digits.We would also like to encourage everyone to donate whatever they can to the Red Cross or Unicef as you cant even being to imagine the destruction that we saw. You see it on the news but to see it in real life is 5 million times worse. This experience has changed our lives and we just want to again say how much we appreciate all of our friends and families concern.

Love you all

Kelly and Marty