Thursday 17th May: Journey to Khao Lak & Tsunami Area Orientation
The day started early as the buses were leaving the hotel for Khao Lak at 8AM. Khao Lak area was one of the areas worst affected by the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004. After a quick breakfast in the room it was time to head for the buses. Khao Lak was about a 2hour bus ride from Krabi, so it wasn’t as far as some journeys will be that will take place later in the trip.
So, we arrived at the Tsunami Volunteer Centre where we will stay for the next three nights. The TVC was set up soon after the Tsunami to help the local people to rebuild their lives both physically and socially. They do work including rebuilding villages, retraining local people e.g. computer skills, teaching English and much, much more.
My Hut at the TVC
After lunch which was Chicken Rice we headed out on the first Field Studies Orientation Tour to visit the areas that had been affected by the Tsunami as well as some of the projects that the TVC were helping with. Much of the area by the coast was devastated and 1000s of people lost their lives on Boxing Day 2004. Some of the things that we saw were amazing including the ship that has been named the ‘Blue Angel’ (pictured below). This ship was carried 1.5km inland by the force of the tsunami stopping just before it hit the building. As well as this we also had time to visit the Ban Naam Khem Tsunami Memorial Park where a permanent memorial has been built to remember the lives of those that died.
The Blue Angel
After the tour we headed into Khao Lak city where we had lunch. As we had, had such a busy day when we came back to the TVC we almost immediately went to sleep
Friday 18th May: Volunteering Day 1
Again it was a very early start, in fact much early. Our alarm clocks woke us up at 6AM because we had to be at Breakfast at 6:30 in order to start work at 7:30AM. We worked all day and the work was very hard because of the hot and humid weather, so we had to make sure we drank lots and repeatedly put on insect repellant. The aim of our work was to make the TVC nicer, so that in the future the site can be turned into a Disaster Education Centre. Therefore our task was to concrete all of the sand paths to make them stonger so that they don't collapse in the rain. It was really, really hard work because we had to carry all of the materials up the hill in the hot Thai weather. After a couple of hours break we are going to go and have dinner.
We will be staying here until Sunday and on Sunday we will make the 12hour long coach trip to Bangkok (on my birthday).
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