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Buy a tsunami souvenir now!
18/01/2005 14:13 - (SA)
Phuket - A macabre souvenir industry is emerging on Thailand's resort island of Phuket, with tsunami VCDs, t-shirts and gory pictures of bloated corpses floating in the sea being snapped up by both local residents and tourists.
The island's tourism industry has been hit by the calamity, which has killed more than 5 300 people, half of whom are Western holidaymakers, but photo shops, bookstores and souvenir shops are doing brisk business.
The largest photo shop in Phuket town centre offers prints of at least 30 different scenes of devastation in the southern coastal provinces battered by the December 26 earthquake and giant waves.
"This is the bestseller," a staffer at the Kodak Express shop said, pointing to a picture showing scores of blackened bodies buried among a large pile of rubble of a collapsed building in Khao Lak.
Bestselling picture
He said the shop started selling the pictures on the afternoon of December 26, with stocks supplied by local photographers and from navy officers.
"We have sold thousands of copies of these pictures. Business is good because people out there want to see what is really happening on the ground," he said, asking not to be identified.
The prints cost 20 baht (50 cents) each, and are bought by both locals and foreigners, he said, adding that it was a legal business.
Some of the pictures depict scenes commonly seen in newspapers, showing people running from raging waves, the magnitude of destruction along the coastlines and shops submerged in deep water.
Others offer a rare glimpse of the search and rescue work.
One is a picture of officers pulling in a string of dead bodies from the sea during a night operation, and another had bloated bodies of naked foreigners floating face up in the open sea.
Tsunami VCDs and posters in the Thai language are also on sale at the photo shop as well as in bookshops around Phuket.
A staffer at the Seng Ho Bookstore, the largest in town, said their stock of some 100 VCDs, priced at 120 baht (three dollars) each, were sold out to mainly Thai residents.
"I don't know why people are interested to see this sad tragedy," she said, adding that she has not watched a video.
The VCD, apparently produced by an enterprising Thai photographer, is a one-hour production compiling scenes in newspapers and television of tsunami-battered areas, and heart-wrenching interviews with local villagers displaced by the disaster.
T-shirts are also on sale in a local market and shops in Phuket.
"Magnitude 9.0. In memory of those who died in tsunami. TSUNAMI SURVIVORS. The deadliest natural disaster in modern history, December 26 2004," was printed on the back of the black collared shirt.
"It is given as a compliment to all the volunteers here, but there is not enough for everybody," said a Thai volunteer decked in the shirt.
Local television station ITV has also printed out tsunami T-shirts for its staff covering the disaster.
- AFP
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