The race to rebuild Patong Beach in Phuket, where the tourism industry was damaged by the Tsunami that hit Thailand on 26 December, is on at high speed.
Savoey Seafood Phuket is one of the biggest restaurant on Patong Beach. Normally at this time of the year it should serve more than 1,200 customers an evening night, yesterday they served only 40 customers.
The tsunami and the over-sensational media coverage has damaged tourism in Thailand more than the wave itself, Phuket hotels see their occupancy plunge, people are canceling their flights and local Thais are loosing their jobs.
But Phuket is making a huge effort to clean up to be back in business. The beach-front Savoey Seafood restaurant on Patong beach was the first seafront restaurant to reopen on 6 January, only 10 days after the Tsunami hit Phuket, the wall of water swept away the tables and chairs and most of the kitchen equipment while dumping a speedboat, a couple of jet-skis and even a minibus in the dining area of the restaurant.
Jan Ohlsson, the 43 year old manager of the restaurant says that warnings to avoid Phuket, and ongoing news that Phuket is destroyed, are ridiculous. Currently Phuket must be the safest place on earth. A similar earthquake and Tsunami again in the same place would be like winning the head-price in the lottery twice in a row.
The Savoey Seafood restaurant was serving breakfast when the first tsunami wave hit Patong beach and all the staff and customers survived. Had the waves hit the restaurant in the evening, packed with customers, then the toll for Patong would have been much higher, Jan Ohlsson said.
While the beachfront of Patong beach was hard hit and many small beachfront businesses were destroyed, a block back there was little damage and life went on as normal since the tsunami wave. What is missing today, are tourists. In the close-by Safari Beach Hotel only 3 rooms are occupied where it should be packed-full at this time of year.
Chai Kanuengkarn, the owner of a limousine and transport company, took out a loan to buy a third car just before the tsunami, when he got 47 bookings for car trips for the month of January. All but 3 of those bookings have been cancelled and he faces ruin if tourists don't start to arrive. If the tourist business don't pick up in the next weeks , then I will have to sell the cars, Kanuengkarn said.
Chai Kanuengkarn said that today Patong Beach in Phuket looks like it did 20 years ago with clean blue water, no yachts or tourists, no touts or ugly wooden bar-shacks. It is really beautiful, like it used to be when tourists first discovered Phuket, he said.
Jan Ohlsson said he was optimistic that tourists would soon start returning to Phuket. Each day more and more beachfront shops and businesses were reopening, completely redecorated, cleaner and more beautiful than before. Swedish tour companies who came to inspect Phuket, said that they were planning again 9 flights a week starting from next month.
