Since the early 90s I regularely travel to southern Thailand for a bit of vacation and visiting friends. Over the years I made many pictures there, and recently I scanned them in.

My favorite location for staying on Phuket is the village of Nai Yang. I know many of the local people there, as well as many of the Falang (foreigners) who live and/or work there. Most of the pictures are taken around that village, and all predate the 2004 tsunami.

There are a lot of nice people living there, some of which I befriended over the years. Many locals try to carve out a living at the edge of the beach, either with a small shop, bar or restaurant, and some manage very well with this.

Worth mentioning are Weena and Kiki who were running a restaurant at the beachroad, and whom are responsible mostly for my strong taste for Thai food nowadays.

All of the local people in the pictures that are named did survive the Tsunami that hit Phuket on december 26th 2004, but many of the places you see have been destroyed.

The inland village itself sustained no damage, neither did the temple and most of the bungaloes other then those of the Nai Yang nature reservation itself.

Most of the coastline buildings are destroyed tho part of them have been rebuilt or are being rebuilt as I write this.

All of the small shops and restaurants have been destroyed and at least some of them will not be able to start over either due to financial reasons or due to a long standing conflict between the local people working at the beach, and the owner of one of the hotels near the beach

At any rate, here are the pictures.

On another note, if you want to help the Thai people cope with the aftermatch of the tsunami, travel there, spend your money there etc. Donations will be very usefull for places like Atjeh and Srilanka, but Thailand just needs o make sure its economy in the south keeps running and it will be able to cope very well.