On 22nd December 2018, I was in Java visiting the volcano Mt Merapi when I received a text message from a friend in China warning me that a tsunami had struck the west coast of the island. The tsunami was triggered by the violent eruption of anak Krakatoa, child of the Krakatoa that had erupted in 1883. In inland Yogyakarta, I was safely far away from the coast but the memory of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami still surged forward before my mind’s eye, mingling with the real sight before me of modern Pompeian destruction from Merapi’s last eruption in 2011.

17 years later, I can begin to understand how I was affected by the Boxing Day tsunami. At the age of 16, I not only understood how short life could be, but how it could be made even shorter. Not only was human life as fragile as tissue paper in water, human endeavours, dreams and buildings were equally flimsy and sooner or later bound to crumble, rot and disintegrate. This taught me to live for the moment and drew me to the art Ukiyo-e which celebrated the colours of life. I also became interested in Buddhism and stoicism, which teach one to face suffering and disaster with cool-headed equanimity and treat materialism and earthly strife and struggles with disdain. I must confess however, that this last lesson ebbed away with the tsunami after I returned to England and eventually became an auction house specialist surrounded by expensive objects. For a moment at least though, I felt the lightness of enlightenment when the desire for heavy and bothersome material objects slips away.

It all began in the morning of December 25, 2004. I was lying in the bed of our hotel room in Phuket when I felt it shake ever so gently. The feeling was like someone trying to wake me up without startling me. I sat up to look around but nobody was there. My mother was in the bed next to me when she also asked if I felt like the bed was shaking. My father was already awake and shaving in the bathroom. Standing, he could not feel anything. We put the bed’s gentle shaking to vibrations and rumblings of sexual pleasure from the neighbouring room - this was Thailand after all. Looking back now, of course, we know this was the earthquake with the epicentre near Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra.

We were entirely unaware of this however, as we went down to breakfast. After we finished, we went to the Amari coral beach hotel’s private stretch of beach. My father sat to recline and sunbathe. My mother and I were more curious about the retreating water. It had seemed as if the sea had gone out for miles. I thought this was the tide and nothing more. My mother however, insisted on taking photos of this strange phenomenon.

Suddenly the water was heading towards us. A thin white line on the horizon coming closer and closer. It did not appear as a threatening wave though. Again, I thought it was simply the tide coming in. It was not until the uniformed guard on the beach yelled at us “Run! Run!”, his hat falling off in confusion, that I realised this was something more serious. Before I could understand what was happening, I found myself following orders and running to nowhere in particular. My mum followed and rather more slowly my father. We ran towards the walled area of the pool, by which time we saw that the water had already almost reached us. Instinctively we ran behind the hotel, hoping the building would give us some cover and height as we climbed the stairs. No sooner had we reached the third floor when the water crashed around us, turning our hotel into an island in the Indian Ocean.

I tried to comprehend the scene before me as the maids wailed and tourists ran up and down the
balconies panicking. I eventually ran too up against the balcony and looked out to a nearby hill. Some Thai people were walking slowly up the hill and turned back nonchalantly at me. I felt helpless; there was nothing they could do to help, I was mortified that they didn’t even try. The water continued to rise and there was nowhere to go. At that point I realised that I was probably going to die. My last thoughts were how I wished I could fly to safety and I lamented that I was too young to have yet enjoyed the pleasures of sex.

But just as I was coming to terms with my premature death at 16 years of age, the waters suddenly flowed out to sea, as if the bathtub plug had been pulled. Suddenly a new chance of life arose as the waters violently swirled and sucked down everyone and everything caught in the strong currents. As the water drained in less than a few minutes, I and everyone else ran down the stairs and out towards the nearby hill from which those earlier escapees had looked at me as already lost to the sea. From here we all could breath a sigh of relief: we would not be stranded on a building again.

It was not long though before a great groan rose; we noticed people with bloody injuries, cuts from broken glass and splintered wood. The Thais were the first to panic after the brief calm and began to climb the nearby cliff in anticipation for a second wave. They were shortly followed by the tourists. We all helped each other, supporting others on our shoulders, while others already above us helped pull us up. The great irony was that later I discovered there was a road just around the corner leading up the mountain - but in the panic, people’s instincts were to immediately climb to higher ground.

And so we climbed up: I and my mother who I helped push above me. I am not sure where my father had went but I knew he was safe as I had seen him run down the building with me. Once we climbed up the little cliff we found ourselves part of a mixed group of Irish, Swedish, German, South African, Italian and English tourists and Thais hiking up the mountain through thick jungle. There strangely suddenly arose those naturally charismatic leaders who led the various groups up the mountain and the rest that followed. I understood then what it meant to be a natural leader: they offered hope and guidance through decisiveness.

As we cut through the jungle, we could hear the sound of waves coming again. Although we were deep in the steamy jungle, I felt any moment that the waves would overtake us and sweep us away: fear and panic once again rose up within me. Soon however, we noticed a fence surrounding a small house. We called out and a young Thai man came out with an axe to cut the wires and let us in. I realised then that I had stepped on broken glass that was sprinkled around the property as protection. As the glass cut deep into my sole, I realised how strange it was that I did not feel pain, or anything at all. I sometimes wondered if this was not all a bad dream?
The group of survivors burst into the poor Thai household, gasping for breath and sweating profusely. I was greatly impressed by the hospitality of the Thais and their lack of visible annoyance at this rude invasion of their private property by demanding tourists who still treated them as servants. The Thais, a family of about five people, with sons and daughters, fed us and lent us clothes to those who had run from the beach in only swimming trunks. The patriarch of the family, a slight man with thick grey hair, dark leathery skin and bright compassionate eyes quickly mounted his motorcycle. With donations from all of us, he rode off quickly to get supplies of water and food from elsewhere. The Thai mother washed my foot and squeezed lemon juice onto my cut before wrapping a cloth around. I have never forgotten the Thai people’s great kindness and consider myself forever in their debt.

The foreign tourists all sat around in a square in the living room trying to calm and console each other. Some were in shock and had to be sent to the bedroom to rest. Others began telling their version of the story of how they survived the tsunami. There was a steely Swedish woman and her young daughter with cheeks wet with tears. Their father, a Swedish diplomat in the Shanghai consulate had gone missing, they told us.

I walked outside for a bit slowly in front of the house. Suddenly I saw my father emerge from the jungle, slowly walking up the dirt path towards the house. I ran towards him in excitement, overjoyed he was safe. When I got closer I could see the blood and scratches over his pale white back. From our high vantage point on the verdant mountain I finally felt safe, but I could hear the waves below and the cries of people caught in them and the destruction. We would stay until dusk at the Thai house.

By the late afternoon a group of us ventured to go down the mountain and back to our hotel to see what had happened but also gather our stuff. As we descended, we came across a man who said he was looking for his wife and children, they had gone out to sea scuba diving that day. We wished him luck but knew there was perhaps little chance that they had survived. We continued along our way down toward the hotel, with the thoughts still poignantly lingering in our minds, how would we cope with the loosing of our loved ones? I was secretly relieved that I did not have to find out.

We arrived at the hotel. The once calm and luxurious hall was now filled with wounded and injured bodies on makeshift beds and mattresses. The hotel staff and receptionists worked tirelessly around the clock, constantly on the phone dealing with emergency after emergency. Our rooms had been blocked and guarded against looters by armed security. The building was not deemed safe enough for us to return they said, and we would have to sleep on the floor in the main reception hall. Thinking of it now, they perhaps were trying to protect us from the horrendous sight of scattered dead bodies.

And so we lay down on out mattresses next to our neighbours mattresses, all tightly packed in the large open air hall. It was a long night; uncomfortably hot with no air conditioning, the mosquitoes relentlessly attacked my sweaty body. I could not sleep well. Instead I turned my head to look at the receptionists. They were still working hard late into the night, receiving more injured from ambulances, organising more beds; had they extra food or supplies to spare? Had they received news of any lost relatives? In this crisis, they resembled not just polite and hospitable hotel receptionists, but turned into steely, organised and efficient servicemen. I was impressed by how they rose to the challenge for which they could never have been trained to prepare for.

I cannot remember when I fell asleep, but I woke up when the sky was still red with a tinge of blue. The sea appeared eerily calm. I sneaked out of the hall and walked around a bit to explore. I saw that one hotel room was open but empty and took my chance to steal a shower. I felt reborn as the water washed away my stale sweat, as well as the dust and dirt of yesterday. A new day was beginning and we expected to leave Phuket island to get out of the way and let the emergency workers get on with the task of saving and rebuilding.

I was not expecting much left from our room, but as we opened the door we could see that everything was just as we left it! All our clothes, passports, money, suitcases were safe. Our room had a little puddle on the floor and nothing more! It turns out that our room was just above the waves. As we packed and returned, there were others clad only in hotel dressing gowns, searching among the rubble for a sandal here or there. I became sharply aware of how myself and my family were left with so much, while others left with nothing.

As we rode in the taxi to the airport, we began to fully comprehend the scale of the disaster. Boats were on the roofs, building were laid low, trees uprooted, glass, bricks and rubble everywhere. It had certainly seemed as if God had wrought his wrath on this exotic Sodom and Gomorrah by the sea.

Nothing could prepare us for the pandemonium of the airport however. Everyone across the island was packed into this tiny provincial airport to escape. Body bags were lined up outside; people with horrendous injuries wheeled out on beds, crying children, emotionally devastated adults. We waited for hours in an interminably long queue before finally getting onto the last plane out of Phuket to Bangkok. What a relief it was to be in the air at last, far above the waves and destruction.

As we arrived in Bangkok, there were volunteer University students handing out water, and doctors to give aid. They checked my foot and cleaned my wound. The British embassy was also there to make sure if we had passports or needed help and the Thai government would put us up in a hotel until our time to leave to Hong Kong. In the days that followed, we returned to normalcy, but ruminated on our experiences. As we watched the news, we learned that the tsunami had reached as far as Sri Lanka and the East coast of Africa. The Thai King’s grandson had been killed and a total of over 200,000 people died.

How did we survive such as disaster virtually unscathed except for a deep scratch on my foot? The scar is barely visible now, although I wish it would remain as a reminder of those times and help me to achieve a higher wisdom. When work seems difficult and one encounters minor mundane setbacks, or when we bemoan our finances or how we could have more, I am reminded that I have already so much.

Nov 14 EDWARD LUPER- LESSONS FROM THE TSUNAMI

Nov 14 CAMBRIDGE JUNCTION REOPENS

Nov 13 EVE WALDRON DESIGN - INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE IN CAMBRIDGE

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