• Tourists and the tsunami recovery Tourists and the tsunami recovery By the New Zealand Herald – January 4, 2005 It is easy to criticize the tourists at Phuket and other Indian Ocean resorts who went back to the beach
• Tourists and the tsunami recovery
Tourists and the tsunami recovery
By the New Zealand Herald – January 4, 2005
It is easy to criticize the tourists at Phuket and other Indian Ocean resorts who went back to the beach a few days after the tsunami and lay in the sun within sight of the devastation. Did they not know that the dead were still being discovered among the debris and the survivors still sifting through the ruins of their lives?
What possesses people that they can lie back and sun themselves instead of lending a hand? If they cannot make themselves useful, at least they could have the sensitivity to stay away, couldn’t they?
Those who ask these questions are themselves a comfortable distance from the disaster. The same sentiments are not being heard from residents of the damaged resorts or their Governments. Quite the contrary, the Thai authorities, for example, are anxious to ensure that tourists are not discouraged from returning wherever it is practicable. …
It is not uncommon for sensitive people to maintain a respectful distance from death for much longer than the bereaved would wish. That is true of personal grief and it is probably true of communities, too. Phuket, Sri Lanka and the other places are probably relieved to see signs of tourism returning. It is the tourists who probably feel more awkward about it, particularly if they come from wealthy Western countries where some of their compatriots think it wrong, at the best of times, to take holidays in the Third World. …
Resorts swamped by the tsunamis need aid right now but not for too long. They have the spirit of enterprise and they need customers more than compassion. For them, leisure-seekers must return. Life must go on.
