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ON A balmy Saturday night at Phuket’s Patong Beach, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Indian Ocean tsunami never happened. It feels like business as usual at the resort town - a concrete cacophony of neon lights, hotels, bars, restaurants, nightclubs, money changers, and stores crammed with sunseekers.

At this shrine to leisure there are few palpable reminders of the tragedy of 26 December 2004, when the sea suddenly disappeared and the tsunami waves from a distant offshore earthquake lashed the town, destroying many buildings, vehicles, and people in their wake.

Small blue warning signs along the beachfront now offer directions to the nearest tsunami evacuation zones. Beneath them, street vendors peddle tsunami souvenir booklets and (pirated) DVDs. However, the heavy reconstruction taking place along the beachside walkway could almost be taken for routine improvements or beautification.

Patong is among the most popular destinations of Thailand’s Andaman coast, a region comprising the provinces of Phuket, Krabi, and Phang Nga that saw more than 5,000 lives - about 2,000 of them foreigners - lost to the tsunami and property damage estimated at $400 million. In the process, the tsunami shook the very lifeblood of the Andaman region - tourism.

Much of the 12 months after the tsunami saw a massive slump in visitors. In response, the Thai tourism industry has made an unprecedented effort to lure back visitors.

“We are seeing a continuous process of recovery - tourists have come back about 50% compared with our target,” says Pongrak Plaiweek, the Vice-Governor of Phuket province, appointed just after the tsunami. “We are planning to look to Australia to attract a new market of tourists.”

With a resurgence in arrivals since the last quarter of 2005, the Thai government and the affected provinces are anticipating at how they can better withstand future shocks to build a new prosperity.

For this, they have requested the help of ADB, which has engaged a team of experts to devise a common vision for the three provinces based on the world’s best practices that will guide the Andaman region’s development for the next 10–15 years.

According to the draft subregional plan, due to be finalized in June, Phang Nga and neighboring Krabi provinces can benefit from offering a different and high quality tourism product – encouraging local people to develop their own tourism and activities.

“Tourism is bypassing the local people - even in Phuket the people working in the big hotels are from outside the area,” says Stuart Gilchriest, a town and tourism planner who is team leader of the group of experts working on the project.

“We wanted a bit more equity in the development so the community can participate more - not just in the service industry.”

Included in the plan is a demonstration project in the Phang Nga village of Ban Tha Lane, where presently a few ramshackle shacks nestle in a scenic bay flanked by limestone cliffs. This will be a model for the rest of the region in transforming the community into one that is self-sufficient and yet complementary to the thriving honeypots of Phuket.

The project would see an interpretation and learning center built in the village where there is already a thriving locally owned kayaking operation, and would teach fishing families the skills they need to cook and cater for tourists and take them out on their boats.

“The aim is to market a tourism that is more community based - modeled on ideas that have been tried in Southern Europe,” adds Mr. Gilchriest. “The vision is that these local villagers can be more sophisticated in the services they offer.”

Phang Nga itself, about 100 kilometers (km) north of Phuket, was one of Thailand’s regions most severely affected by the tsunami. The scars of the disaster still run deep. In the sleepy coastal town of Baan Nam Khem, for example, 10-meter-high waves lashed the shore, tearing through houses and boats like they were made of paper and killing more than 1,500 inhabitants.

Today, the sound of rebuilding fills the air as new bungalows are constructed for the survivors or damaged structures are repaired. But despite this buzz of activity, a pall of gloom still hangs over the town.

At nearby Bang Nieng the mood is eloquently expressed by a pyramid of rotting flowers and faded photographs of some of the tsunami’s foreign victims, adorned with messages of sympathy from countries like France, United Kingdom, and United States. Just behind is a police boat stranded in a field next to the main Phuket-to-Bangkok road.

In the center of town, a bright orange tug boat stands alongside the main road, belying the death and destruction it caused in arriving at its incongruous position. Further on, another larger boat dwarfs the house against which it rests, having miraculously spared the building (and its occupants) from annihilation as it traveled inland on the crest of a monster wave.

Living in one of the hundreds of new tsunami recovery homes nearby is Jannon Paisalvorapan, 50, who ran 10 bungalows on the beach before the disaster. She lost everything in the disaster – including some of her foreign guests.

“I only had a small piece of land,” she says, weeping. “I have no money to rebuild my wooden huts. I don’t know my future - I have no way to make a living. Every time I ask for money [from the government] I get ignored.”

She says that with large hotels taking up all the coastal land, she has no chance of moving back.

It was not only the small operators that were badly hit. At the popular resort area of Khao Lak, where pristine beaches are surrounded by unspoiled rainforest, manager of the Merlin Hotel, Krisda Phanichyanondh, awaits the next wave of visitors, as a flurry of reconstruction work makes the coastline one large building site.

“During last year we lost about 70% of our business,” he says, adding that about 30 of the well-appointed hotel’s 200 rooms were destroyed by the tsunami while five guests were killed.

“Journalists came after the tsunami to take photos of the damage but they have never returned to see our reconstruction. What we want to let the people know is that we need the clients coming back. For that we have to create a new confidence.”

The subregional plan is intended to build some of that confidence, ensuring that all reconstruction is carried out taking into consideration and respecting the region’s own culture, the needs of the local people, and natural heritage, according to Alfredo Perdiguero, an ADB senior project economist and mission leader for the planning project.

“Lack of land use planning, and destruction of corals and mangroves exacerbated the effects of the tsunami,” he says. “The tsunami has shown that things can be done better and probably they should be done better.”

The plan has been drawn up in close consultation with the local people through a series of nine workshops in each of the affected provinces. The last of the workshops was held in mid-May. Researchers canvassed 1,000 local people, and 2,000 Thai and foreign tourists, as well as national and local government agencies and NGOs in drafting the report.

“An Asian tsunami will probably not come again for 200 or 300 years, if at all. But there are many other disasters that can happen in the region - whether fires, disasters at sea, landslides, terrorism attacks, or bird flu,” adds Mr. Perdiguero.

“The three provinces have to work together so that their economy, infrastructure, and people are ready. But above all, the plan will make sure that the region does not allow the slow destruction of its natural resources and culture due to lack of coordination and planning - that would be the worst disaster of all.”

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