I was in Guernsey visiting my family. Horrified watching it all on the news. I was due to fly back here early February and ended up having my own little crusade to help as many people as I could which went on for 6 months.
Got my local BBC radio and newspaper involved and got buried under toys, sweets and school equipment that filled half a room. Couldn't bring it all out with me...had to sell a lot of it to turn it into money and then bought truck loads of stuff here and took it mostly to the camps around Baan Nam Khem.
Sent reports and pics back to the BBC...you can still see them all on the net here...22 parts in total>>>
BBC - Guernsey - Features - After The Tsunami
and here>>>
BBC - Guernsey - Features
2 picture galleries>>>
BBC - Guernsey - In Pictures - After the Tsunami Gallery
BBC - Guernsey - In Pictures - Return to Phuket
Not too happy with some of their editing plus some of the picture captions are wrong.
Took as many bargirls and girls from internet shopsas I could...they all wanted to go up to Baan Nam Khem with me and it was humbling to see them all buy stuff in the supermarket too to give to the survivors.
Terrible times. Let's hope nothing like that happens again in our lifetime.