[tbhotia]

Finally, we arrived to our destination, the quarters of the staff of the hotel, the staffs that were there was amazed and crying in joy to see their peers and us, this touched both of us and we thanked them for all they had done. However, this was not the finally destination for us, but just a rendezvous point from where another group of staff drove us in their car to another place, a local guest house where they housed another group a staff. We were shown our room, the room was very basic but at this point it was heaven for us. We got showered as the smell began to creep in as the nerves settle down and our basic instincts regained its functions.

We spent a few hours in the guesthouse and began calling home to keep relatives informed with our situation and also to get update as to what was happening, as we did not have any information as there were no television, Internet or radio in this guesthouse and the guests could speak much English. We began to feel frustrated, as we didn’t know what was still happening in the other side of the hill, which could be seen from our room. We thought maybe the Tsunami had stopped and everything was beginning to calm down. At around four pm, we decided to head back to Patong and check if we could get back in the hotel and get our valuables in order to return back to Hong Kong on our flight on 27th of December. From the guesthouse we began to walk towards to the main road, we waited on the roadside to hail a tuk tuk, however, I told my girlfriend we could easily hail any of the cars going past, within minutes two car stopped simultaneously, a pickup truck and a car, we opted for the car as it was closer to us as both vehicles took a while to stop due the speed in which vehicles traveled in this road. We asked the owner if he could give us a ride to Patong, luckily the owner was heading back to Patong as he was a resident there and his wife had been injured by the Tsunami. He had just dropped his wife off at the hospital and was returning to pick up some stuff from his home. As we drove off towards Patong, police had blocked the entrance to Patong and were only allowing a few vehicles to enter; this intervention had allowed rescue vehicles more room to drive through the massive number of vehicles and bikes on a two-lane road. We arrived at Patong near the owner’s home, he asked us to take a taxi bike from here and we were not far from the hotel, the cost was a hundred bhat and we were not going to complain as the driver would be risking his own life entering this zone. At this point, everything around that area (less than 400 meters from the beach) looked very calm and people were cleaning up and helping the injured. The taxi-bike took us through the main road and there was debris everywhere, vehicles, jetskies, bikes everywhere, buildings damaged and shops destroyed. As we approached the turn-off point to the street that led to the beach and our hotel, we saw the military had blocked the road and were only allowing people on foot. As we head on the foot towards to hotel which was around twenty meters from the turn off point we were shocked to full scale damage of the street, I decided to take some photos of the street but my girlfriend did not feel it was appropriate and we kept walking towards to hotel. Just as we were within a couple feet to the entrance, we heard the noise of people, cars, bikes coming towards us from the beach, this was thought to have been another Tsunami heading our way, we quickly turned around and started to run towards the turn off point. As we got to the turn-off point we were looking around to see what our options where, we decided to turn right of the turn-off point and use the building as a shield, later I realized that the ground floor was not solid enough as I consisted mostly of large glass. I quickly shouted to my girlfriend to run towards to the other side of the road and hail anything quickly. We manage to hail a bike with a side cart (cage), quickly we jumped in and the bike set off towards higher ground. The driver stopped and we quickly got off and thanked him and wished him good luck. At this place there were hundreds of hotel guest gathered, all waiting for the destruction to end. Both of us we back to square one, emotions running high, panic stricken and uncertain. We realized that we shouldn’t have come back. Luckily, we found hope as we found the rest of the larger group of people from our hotel that hadn’t left the hotel with us during the evacuation. We were delighted as everyone was there and the management had organized special services taking guests back to hotel to collect their valuables and luggage. The management were taking five people at a time and was not only helping his guests (Burasari) but other as well, we finally managed to get on the last trip as it was getting dark and there was no electricity in the town of Patong. The management took us to the hotel through a different route and the other way was blocked off in order to create a one-way traffic. The route bared scars of total destruction as we headed towards the beach front, there were buses over turned and slammed into the near by shops and boats that were beached and as we reached the beach front the destruction was unforgiving, there loads of Thai people trying to help rescue people trapped in various areas and we even saw an underground supermarket which was flooded and rescuers trying to pump out the water. We reached our hotel and there was a few staff helping out the guest to collect their valuable. As we entered the hotel it was dark and wet and the floors were covered with wet sand, the staff used their torch to guide us to our rooms and we quickly gathered everything we could and headed back towards the car, as we got near the car, there was another warning and we quickly rushed back to the roof. We waited patiently in the dark and there was another guest there who started to cry heavily, later we realized her boyfriend was out there in the street while we returned to the roof. After staying in the roof for about 30 minutes, a young foreigner appeared from the dark and the girl began to burst into tears again as her boyfriend had returned safetly. The staff and we were very happy for them and began to get ready for our attempt to leave the area, this time everything went smoothly. We got back to place where the rest of the guests where being housed and later a bus was organized by the management to relocate us to various hotels around the east side of the Phuket. By the time we got our hotel it was already 10 pm and the new hotel’s kitchen was closed and we had to visit the local mini-mart were I purchase some beers and pot-noodles. We stayed up till 12:30pm at the bar drinking and eating and watching the news (CNN) on the television for the first time.