Thailand - Ao Nang/Tsunami

After spending five days with a drink in your hand, the only thing your body wants to do is recover. Alex and I both were in this state when we left Koh Phagnan. Our next destination was Alex’s favorite place in the world: Rai Ley beach. It’s on an isthmus situated between two massive limestone cliffs and is virtually impossible to access by land.

Because of the limited accessibility, many of the people stay in Ao Nang and visit Rai Ley very briefly, instead staying on the beach in town. This creates a highly crowded and dirty beach in Ao Nang and by comparison a seemingly untouched beach on Rai Ley. Upon arrival there, I immediately realized why it was Alex’s favorite place; the sand was soft, the beach was clean and practically empty. The water, much like a hot bath, was fantastically warm and relaxing to sit in.

To save money, we stayed in Ao Nang and took a long tail boat to Rai Ley each morning. The first day was calm and peaceful lying on the beach. It rained for about an hour while we had lunch, but the rest of the time was spent soaking up the sun. Our second day, however, turned into the craziest experience of my life.

We were back on the beach by noon and spent a good two hours doing absolutely nothing. It was blistering hot today, which must have scared off some tourists because the beach was less crowded than the previous day. After lunch we retook to our same spot in the sand and lay back down. A few minutes after putting my headphones in, it felt as if there was a slight rolling underneath the ground. I’d been in earthquakes before, so I thought it might be something of that nature. However sometimes you can often feel the rumble of a boat as it passes close to shore and I thought nothing of it. I closed my eyes and began to doze off

About twenty minutes later I could hear Alex talking to someone. I looked up to see a Thai man speaking with him saying things like “Phuket! Phuket!” or “you must go.” With his accent and limited grasp of the English language, its was very difficult to understand what exactly he was trying to say. After a few minutes of trying with us, he gave up and went along to the beach to another group of people.

Alex and I looked at each other, thinking, “that was weird.” It was at this point we noticed the beach was practically empty and a lot of the boats were leaving. I mentioned I thought I’d felt an earthquake and we started joking about the idea of a tsunami. Alex made the off-handed remark that “You don't have to panic until the water goes out 100 meters in a matter of three minutes.” That’s when we realized the water had receded pretty far out over the past few minutes. We both got a feeling of unease and decided we should probably go. We packed our things and started walking towards the boats.

And the siren went off.

Our unease turned into full-blown panic and we started high tailing it. All the locals were screaming – especially the boat drivers. We leaped into a boat with a few other people as many of them chaotically started ditching port; some completely empty. During a tsunami, the two safest places to be are as high as possible or way out at sea. We picked the latter. Our boat went screaming through the waves, passing all the other outbound boats. It was complete chaos. The look in the driver’s eyes said it all. If there ever was a time to panic, this is it.

I kept staring out at the boats dotting the horizon, waiting for an incoming wave to swallow them up. The scenarios playing out in my head of our little boat trying to make it over a massive wave did not bode well. I put on a lifejacket thinking, if I needed it, it would do me some good. But all I could think of were two things: That wave is gonna hit and I’m going to die a horrible death or that wave is gonna hit and I’m gonna somehow live and have an awesome story to tell.

I kept telling myself it was going to be the latter.

The boat touched down to an evacuation point and there had yet to be a wave. Alex and I quickly ditched our lifejackets and ran to a waiting pickup truck. We jumped in the back and turned to see the other passengers slowly waddling up the beach. We began screaming at them to “hurry up.” Time nearly stood still as they worked their way to the truck; eventually climbing in the back.

It wasn’t until we were well inland when I had the consciousness to check my phone and find out what was going on. Twitter was blowing up with reports of an 8.2 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. The exact same spot as the 2004 earthquake/tsunami that killed 250,000 people. But, while there were tsunami warnings in effect, there were no confirmations. We kept looking out at the locals evacuating around us and noticed they were becoming increasingly less worried. By the time we got to Krabi (about 10 miles inland) I’d read numerous reports saying “due to the type of earthquake, there is no tsunami expected.”

Still, Alex and I didn’t want to take any chances. We to make sure it was confirmed there was no tidal wave coming before going back to a coastal city. So, we plopped down in a bar with wifi, had some food and a drink and waited it out.

That’s where we met Martha and Jess; two English girls that had gotten stuck in Krabi on their way to Ao Nang. We all hit it off and kept drinking while we awaited word that it was safe to go back. However, by the time we got anything it was not only pissing down rain but well past the last bus. We all knew we’d survived a tsunami scare and it deserved a celebration.

Tsuanami Party 2012 was on!

We spent hours celebrating our second chance at life by doing the same thing we’d always done; doing stupid shit under the influence of alcohol and living to regret them the next day. And we were successful yet again.

After this whole experience, I looked into the 2004 tsunami. I'd heard nothing about it since it happened and was curious as to what we could have been faced with. On Wikipedia, the main picture says it all. A bunch of people are fleeing a wave that dwarfs over them as it crashes into land…

…that picture was taken in Ao Nang.