Tsunami - 10 weeks on: Aura of calm after the storm

Buddhist monks at the Wat Tam Sau temple are always ready to greet visitors and impart their wisdom. Picture / Brett Phibbs

THAILAND - The sweat creeps through T-shirts and rolls down faces. It's hot outside the Tiger Cave Temple, a few kilometres outside Krabi in Thailand.

Inside the limestone grotto the air is cool and the atmosphere peaceful. A solitary monk sits cross-legged on a platform, orange robes tucked around him.

He has a smile for a skinny black kitten rubbing around his legs. His posture mimics the golden Buddha statues behind him, gentle smiles carved on benevolent faces.

Three Thai women arrive with offerings of flowers and food. He sprinkles water over them for good luck. More monks arrive and begin to chant. It is calming simply to be there.

The Thai people flocked to the temples after the tsunami, and the Buddhism which rules most of their hearts has helped them through the trauma.

The monks provide reassurance that this life is temporary. For many who lost loved ones, the belief they are not gone forever brings peace.

People say that in the early days after the big waves they would go to the temple in grief but leave with smiles.

Maybe this helps to explain why Thailand did not shut down in shock and grief when a probable 10,000 people died. Perhaps it also helps to explain the comments from tsunami survivors from overseas about how kind the Thai people were to them, putting strangers' needs ahead of their own.

After the tsunami, Thai volunteers were everywhere, from the highest to the lowest in society - the police chief seen directing traffic, the workers seen hosing disinfectants on corpses, the monks allowing temples to be resting places for piles of blackened bodies. People pulled bodies from the sea and dug them from sand and mud. They handed out water, food and comfort.

The Thailand that remains is scarred by these deaths and sights, the families wiped out and the orphans who remain.

But already it is part of Thailand's history, says guide Theerapakorn Wongkamhaeng, known as Oak because of the "akorn" in his first name.

The Thai women have come to pray because "it makes them happy, makes them calm", he says. Some Thai people are still too scared to return from the inland villages where they took refuge. Oak explains this by outlining the nature of Buddhist beliefs. People have different levels of understanding. "One level just come here, worship and happy, one level is understand life, and top level understand nature. There are many levels."

Those who fear are still learning to understand the cycle of life and death. But most Thai people, he says, are okay.

They understand the tsunami is something that does not usually happen. It just did happen.

"The easy thing of Buddhists, if you understand nature you understand everything. I listen to one owner of hotel and the family ... one son and one daughter and his wife pass away in tsunami, only him alive. "He still okay, come back to do business again. It's okay. Everyone get in trouble first or second week. When time passed longer they more understand about life, they come back.

"When you come here you not see much Thai people sad or still in trouble, different from news you see on the outside."

The Government is pushing a more official version of the message. On the sands of Patong Beach, where scores died, there's a festival for 900 travel agents and journalists, invited and paid for by the Government, Thai Airways and the Thai Tourism Authority. It's to show Thailand is back on its feet.

Locals are not allowed in but crowd around to watch and listen to the live music. There have already been body-building competitions and volleyball but after sunset a candlelit memorial is held for the victims.

We fumble to light the candles. There is no minute's silence. Fireworks suddenly shatter the quiet. Patong Beach has been reclaimed.

It isn't that Thais are not sad. They just desperately need to see the tourists back. Many are queasy about holidaying in an atmosphere they think will be macabre. And they fear the waves may hit again. But the Government reassures people that such an event is unlikely. As well, work is under way on an early warning system.

Khau Lak, in Phang Nga Province, is a different story. But in Phuket most hotels were not damaged and are open for business.

Officials are not denying there is suffering. Kanok Abhiradee, president of Thai Airways International, emphasised that fact but also said it was time for the tourists to come back.

He talked of a Thai woman who clung to her two boys but the wave was too strong and she eventually had to let them go. They were swept away.

She wept for two hours, he said, but then she went to the marketplace and helped take fried rice to those who had survived. She decided at that particular time - two hours after the waves - that life has to go on ... Today I pledge that life has to go on."

Some of the enticements for tourists to return were attractive. A tourist official said the tsunami had cleaned up the beaches.

But some of the sales pitches were unusual. Phang Nga Province, where most of the casualties were, will get a tsunami memorial museum - possibly with a simulated tidal wave, movie-style.

SOME enticements were uncomfortable. One upbeat video said the "resilience of the sea gypsies is evident from their smiling faces despite their loss".

Hundreds of sea gypsies along the Phang Nga Coast died and entire villages were swept away.

But it is true that even in these severely hit areas people are making the most of what little they have left - and what they certainly have left is their faith.

At one camp for the homeless, a giant statue of Buddha has been erected, the concrete not yet dry.

At the camp, orphans go to classes, people play loud music and children have fun on their bikes.

People talk of horror but do so quietly, even calmly. There are no tears.

The monks have been here too, Oak says, teaching mind control and meditation.

Australian Nick Jackson, who is married to a Thai woman and runs a bar at Patong Beach, marvels at the people.

"They are an extraordinary race. They just pick themselves up, dust themselves off and get going. They don't complain, they don't wait for the Government because the Government's not going to help them anyway. Their strength is gained by helping each other."

There is an order to life in Thailand, he says. He is not a Buddhist but says that faith keeps people going, along with a deep love for their royal family and a deep love for their own families.

"They're totally tolerant of any religion and any sexuality and anything that is decent. The only thing they draw the line at is cruelty. They don't harm animals and that says a lot in itself. And don't forget, those people who went are seen as having gone to a better place. When they lose people they do a different sort of grieving. A funeral here is a very happy event.

"They believe this is only a temporary stay of filling in time."

Oak hands out a pamphlet to the Westerners on this trip, full of advice. Thai people are always calm, always polite, it says, so don't bother with aggression or confrontation. "Rude behaviour and shouting will achieve absolutely nothing with the people."

The only way you get anywhere in Thailand, it seems, is with kindness and a smile.