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Tourists flee holiday nightmare
27/12/2004 16:05 - (SA)
Don Muang Airport, Bangkok - From Sri Lanka to Thailand, thousands of distraught tourists were fleeing many of Asia's top resorts on Monday after devastating tidal waves reduced idyllic beaches to scenes of carnage.
With the scale of the catastrophe more evident by the hour, travellers were abandoning their holidays in the sun after the disaster triggered by a massive earthquake left more than 23 000 people dead.
Hundreds of the dead were believed to be foreign holidaymakers, including many of Thailand's 866 known fatalities.
Texan Sara Rooney counted herself lucky to be alive after a wall of water slammed into Krabi's popular Railey beach, tearing dozens of bungalows to shreds, tossing boats like matchsticks and leaving the tiny resort isolated.
"It was pretty frightening," Rooney said minutes after being evacuated from Railey to Krabi. "There is no food, no water. No one wants to stay."
Governments and relief agencies set up crisis cells and hotlines and offered help to the countries swept by the giant tsunamis, as they prepared to send planes to bring their citizens home. 'Herculean' tourist evacuation
Travel agencies and government officials in various European capitals said up to 10 000 British tourists may have been affected, more than 5 000 Italians, up to 5 000 French, at least 4 000 Germans, more than 2 500 Swiss, about 2 000 Poles, over 1 000 Belgians and a similar number of Greeks.
Thailand has escaped relatively lightly compared to the calamitous tolls in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. But as southeast Asia's busiest tourist destination, with 12 million foreign visits expected this year, it is undergoing a Herculean tourist evacuation.
Hundreds of rescue ships, helicopters and planes have been mobilised to move foreign visitors, estimated by a tourism official as topping 100 000, who had packed into southern Thailand's resorts for Christmas and New Year.
An emergency services director for Thai Airways said the government was encouraging all foreign tourists to leave southern Thailand and return to Bangkok or their home countries. <>Refugee centre
In Sri Lanka, where at least 70 foreign tourists were among the nearly 11 000 dead, dozens of German and British tourists who survived tidal waves moved to a makeshift refugee centre before cutting short their holidays.
Bruised and shaken, men and women huddled at a conference centre where tour operators set up desks to arrange for the evacuation of the tourists.
"We have never experienced anything like this before," Briton Ken Babb told AFP. "This is not an adventure. This is a disaster."
They said they were awaiting a flight home although they were originally due to spend the New Year in Sri Lanka.
Tourist Melony Maas, one of thousands of Germans said to be holidaying on the beach, said she and her mother wanted to help the Sri Lankan staff at their hotel after the first tidal wave, but the staff insisted they leave.
"I cannot describe how I feel," Maas said as she awaited a flight home. "This is very sad for the Sri Lankan people. A lot of poor people have died.
"This is my second visit to Sri Lanka. What I want now is to get back, but I will come again." Maldives
Some 65 tourists from the low-lying Maldives returned to Hungary in shock at the harrowing experience.
"The tourists were frightened and their luggage was still drenched with water when they arrived in Budapest," Malev airline spokeswoman Krisztina Nemeth said.
"Many of the tourists were families with young children and they were in complete shock from the experience."
Tourism officials in London said several thousand British tourists had cancelled trips to Asia in the wake of the disaster.
French tourists began arriving home in Paris after their ordeal to be met by counsellors.
The head of a Red Cross psychological counselling unit meeting the exhausted passengers said he saw no one badly hurt but that some had lived through the terrifying moment when a huge wave wiped out their resort.
"It's more difficult for them," said Claude-Olivier Martin, adding that many passengers had said all they wanted to do was return to their homes "to rest". Some tourists staying on
In Malaysia, which saw 51 fatalities yet managed to escape the devastation witnessed by other countries in the region, holidaymakers said they were determined to get the most out of their vacations.
Strolling along the beach in bikinis and sipping cocktails beside hotel pools, several Western tourists on Penang said they had no intention of leaving the resort island early.
With jet skis and other tourist sea toys lying mangled on the shore, they watched search and rescue boats plying the waters off the upscale Batu Ferringhi beach bring ashore the bodies of a 70-year-old man and an eight-year-old boy.
"We are not going to leave just because of this," said Grant Brewster, a 43-year-old Briton on holiday with his wife Gennifer and their two children.
- AFP
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