A lucky girl among thousands out of luck

BANGKOK – When the dreadful December 26 tsunami struck, the one we most worried about was Nalinee, the daughter of our friends Dr. Noi Charuphant Thongtam and his wife Normita.

Noi, an Associate Professor of Kasetsart University here and renowned as one of the leading royal agronomers and his charming Filipino wife, who hails from Nueva Ecija, had proudly informed us a week before the tidal wave engulfed the area, that their daughter – a doctoral graduate of a prestigious Danish university in Odense – had just moved to Phuket to pursue her career there as a marine biologist.

Noi, who had met his wife Normita Bunao when he was a student in the Central Luzon Agricultural College (now a university) in Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, is a member of the Thai royal family, a descendant of King Rama IV (the King Mongkut of Anna and the King of Siam), and supervises as a director of the king and queen’s Royal projects in Chiang Mai, up north. He had grown close to us since he comes to Manila two or three times a year to supervise our O.B. Montessori School Farm in Alfonso, Cavite – near Tagaytay – which he personally designed modeled after the "self-sufficiency farm projects" of His Majesty King Bumibon Aduladej. In partnership with the University of Kasetsart, the flourishing O.B. Montessori farm now produces vege-tables, ornamental plants, and maintains fishponds. Normita, for her part, is chief sub-editor of the influential Bangkok Post.

In any event, Nalinee (whose cute name means "Lotus") was the apple of daddy’s eye. She had just returned from postgraduate studies in Denmark and been posted to Phuket. By coincidence, two of her Danish classmates had arrived on their honeymoon to escape from the freezing winter in Odense (the hometown, by the way, of the immortal spinner of fairy tales, like The Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen). The two, marine biologists themselves, were enjoying the sun and sand, and had urged Nalinee to join them in a swim in Khao Lak that fateful Sunday morning.

Nalinee, fortunately, had remembered there was an important errand to be run for her father – far inland from the beach – and ruefully told her friends she couldn’t join them for their morning swim, but promised to come later in the afternoon.

How fate plays tricks on us! Nalinee was saved – high and dry many kilometers from the catastrophe.

Her friends, blissfully swimming offshore, were caught by the tsunami which came out of nowhere. The powerful wave tore them apart. The man was hurled into a mangrove swamp, and emerged badly battered, his legs broken, but otherwise not grievously injured. His bride, on the other hand, was dashed against rocks and debris, swirled around, an ear torn off, and, dirt and water seeping into the injury, induced a severe brain infection. Fortunately, she was plucked from the debris which had "buried" her, and rushed to a hospital. Afterwards, a German medical team airlifted her from Bangkok on an emergency flight to a hospital in Germany.

Her husband was confined for his injuries in a Bangkok medical facility, and didn’t learn until later of his wife’s having been rescued, and of her having been sent to Germany.

In retrospect, with 165,000 dead, scores of thousands missing (they’re even using elephants here now, to sniff out deeply-buried corpses and help haul them out of the rubble or the sand), the couple were – in a sense lucky, too – luckier than others, especially their fellow Scandinavians.

The newspapers here say that 1,900 Swedes and 1,500 Finns are still missing! Hope fades. What a tragedy!

As for Nalinee, she was saved from harm, by being a loving and obedient daughter.

Yet who decides who lives or dies?

People here in Thailand, as in Sri Lanka, the Andamans, the Malvides, India and Africa where the unexpected but murderous earthquake-provoked tsunami struck will, for many years, be groping for an answer.

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As the world is consumed in grief, and aid comes pouring in – not fast enough, despite the heroic efforts of many persons and nations, and battalions of helicopters – Thailand has been doing its part. Thai doctors, nurses, experts, volunteers, police and military have been working night and day in the disaster-struck provinces.

Indonesia, of course, was the hardest hit, with a reported 94,081 gone – but cadavers continue to show up. Sri Lanka lost 30,527 so far. India 15,693. Thailand 5,291. Malaysia 74. Maldives 74. Burma 59. Somalia 176. Kenya 2, Tanzania 10. Worse reports may still be in prospect when the final tally is made.

Over here in Bangkok, however, things have returned to normalcy. Friends in Europe were aghast when we bade them goodbye, saying we were flying home, but would spend a few days in Bangkok. "Why," they exclaimed, "wasn’t Bangkok destroyed by the tsunami?" We had to explain that geography-wise, Bangkok was very far away from the disaster scene. If I recall right – from my last visit there many years ago – it is a one hour and a half flight by jet from Bangkok to Phuket.

As we drove in from Don Muang airport in a hotel limo, our driver Mr. Kim said that it was business as usual in Bangkok, with tourists continuing to pack the hotels and more arriving (nobody of course going onward to the resorts in the south). A bright sun hung in the blue sky. The streets were a bustle. The sidewalk stalls filled with customers.

Kim signed: "Everything is delightful here, sir – except the traffic."