• Struggling for survival
• 'Washed up' fishermen turn carpenter and build their own boats
• 'Tsunami village' rises from rubble
• Inspired by Church aid, sea gypsies turn to Christ
• Foreign aid crucial
• Body ID center looks future
• Shoddy housing doesn't make a home
• Outside volunteer carves new career in housing
• Counting the costs to the environment
• Underwater tourist trails
• Turtle hatchery at risk after waves
• Where the money went
• Covered for everything but the wave
• Corporations learn that caring counts
• Starting again from scratch
• Swedish survivor gains perspective after wave 'turned my life upside-down'
• Reasons to smile
• Justice will prevail, investor believes
• Courage and resilience ease personal pain
• Help wanted
• Second chance to get it right
• Tide turns on tourist demographics in Khao Lak
• Light on the horizon
• One day at a time
• Widows and orphans left out in the cold
• Art for the heart
KEEPING THE DEAD
Starting again from scratch
Small entrepreneurs without connections have been left mainly to their own resources to rebuild business
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| ''We haven't had even a single Asian diver walk into our shop,'' says Jularat Takrudngoen of Warm Water Divers. |
Hello, what can I do for you, Madam?'' asks Bee, the 27-year-old proprietor of a shop on Phuket's Patong beach, chatting up a group of tourists looking at a counterfeit Balenciaga bag in her store.
She laughs out loud when asked what is happening one year after the tsunami.
Business seems to be brisk for Ms Bee now, despite the slow recovery since her shop was swept into the sea by the tidal wave. Sales have started to bounce back over the past four months, she says, although only to about 60-70% of pre-tsunami levels.
''It has not fully rebounded but at least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel,'' she says.
Patong beach today is packed with foreign tourists, mostly from Scandinavia, sunbathing on a sandy shore dotted with purple umbrellas. However, Asian tourists have still not come back. Fear of ghosts, everyone says.
Ms Bee returned to do business a couple of days after the tsunami and managed to display her goods on the footpath under candlelight.
When she heard about government assistance, she rushed out to seek help, but financial aid of a meagre 2,000 baht was all she and neighbours were able to qualify for.
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| ''We have such a hopeless government,'' says Ms Bee, who had to sell land in Ayutthaya to raise funds to rebuild her Patong shop. |
''You've come to the right person,'' she says when asked about how people without the right kind of connections manage to keep going.
''I have something I need to say. I used to represent Patong's shop owners, and I've found that we have such a hopeless government.''
Due to the high rent of 50,000 baht a month for her shop, she found herself unable to borrow money from banks because she couldn't rustle up a high-ranking civil servant to act as a loan guarantor. As a result, she headed back home to sell her farmland in Ayutthaya.
''It was my last property, but I need my family to survive first,'' said Ms Bee, a mother of two children.
During the difficult time, foreign customers who come to Phuket regularly have offered their help to the owners of severely damaged shops.
''One of our regular Dutch customers went back home to raise funds after he realised what had happened to us and then came here to give us the money by hand without asking for anything in return,'' she says.
Although business may be looking up along Patong beachfront, those with underwater interests may need further time to recover, says Jularat Takrudngoen, the general manager of Phuket-based Warm Water Divers.
The scuba diving sector is still in gloom. The diving shop's current high-season overseas bookings have dropped by 20% from previous peak periods, and the number of walk-in customers is half what it was before.
Sales of diving equipment at Warm Water's beachfront outlet are now about 200,000 baht per month, compared with 800,000 baht in previous years.
During the year since the tsunami, the owners have been forced to close less busy branches in Trang and on Phi Phi Island, and only two branches in Phuket remain in operation.
''We haven't had even a single Asian diver walk into our shop. Actually, Warm Water is very popular among Singaporean divers, but they are afraid of spirits from the dead in the killer wave,'' she says.
Ms Jularat said scuba diving had just started to become popular among Thai people, but business has been dull since the tsunami.
Despite the decline in business, she hopes to see the number of divers rebounding gradually over the next few months as a lot of regular customers are showing interest in coming to survey the current condition of dive sites.
She has a similar view as Ms Bee on the slow progress of Thai government assistance. ''I rate it at only a mediocre level for what has been done to revive small operators in devastated areas,'' she says.
However, Ms Jularat praised the Tourism Authority of Thailand's efforts to rebuild the country's reputation among foreign tourists, particularly the reputation of the beautiful diving sites along the Andaman coast.
She said the government should make much more effort to stimulate business, and a continuing promotion campaign is also needed for the forthcoming low season.
''So far what I'm really worried about is that the tourism industry will be hurt badly by a bird flu outbreak.''
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