Close call

I just found out that a good friend of mine and his fiancee were kayaking in Phuket Bay as the Tsunami struck. Michael and Robbin were vacationing in Thailand as Robbin is working for 9 months in Japan for Disney and they wanted to spend the holidays together. I'll let Michael tell the story (excerpted from the forthcoming 'Tsunami - A Love Story.')

Robbin and I went to Thailand for X-mas New Years. Part of our vacation was a 3-day kayaking tour around the beautiful landscape of Phuket Bay. On our second day of kayaking was around Pak Bea and Krabi. After a few hours kayaking through the limestone canyon we were heading back to the longboat to head to the next island. Our guide, Sani, took us into a hiding cave (it was basically Sani, Robbin and myself for three days) big enough for two kayaks and had an opening through the top of the island about 20 meters up. While we were rowing out, we heard screams from the other group that was in the canyon that day. They'd been caught up on a strong current coming in from the ocean and had capsized. We helped them recover their stuff and towed a now-empty kayak to a safe area of relatively still water. Finally, we got all together in a group and gave them our bandanas to help stop the bleeding--they had some pretty thick cuts from the rocks under the water.

Some of the guides tried to paddle out of the canyon to get help from the boat, but the current was too strong. We waited in our little lagoon for about 30 minutes until the current died down. Then back to the longboat and to camp.

That's basically our story--when we got back to the island we were staying at there was some extensive damage. Our camp was muddy, our guides cabin was pretty messed up and our shoes were swept away. Other people staying there were pretty shaken up and told us it was really bad. One bad possibilty was that we were at the beach in Phuket that had the most casualties just two days before the tsunami hit and were planning to stay in a bungilow on the beach the day after.

Pretty harrowing. We are all glad that Michael and Robbin are safe and sound.