This is what weblogs can do...Pretty good. No!?
tsunami help weblog
It has been an interesting time for media watching. The Guardian/Observer have been pretty good as has CNN and The Nation, Bangkok. Asia Times Online was 'on holiday', the BBC bland and the Bangkok Post so appalling I shan't bother to read it again. As for Thai TV??..well smart suits, natty frocks and terrific hairdos...they did wear black which no-one here did..as one guy I spoke to said..well most people here have never been to Phuket and hardly know where it is..as for Aceh or Sri Lanka!!
The best report I have read is this:
Observer Focus:After The Flood
Most sadly this is some of what I was writing a year ago
December (2003)in Sarn
I was reading another scented book about the charms of European country cottages. After Peter Mayle, Tim Parks, Stewart, Hawes and now this one an American called Greene…I wonder why I read them. I am looking for something. But it does not emerge. Of course what has happened is that ‘Travel Writing’ has been supplanted by these ‘chez moi’ monologues of dunkshy interior decoration and ‘ooooh what food’. There is no longer any travel involved at all. Being has replaced Travelling as a way of narrating and explaining. I suppose that by writing about Pen Llyn I am doing the same; but you will find no sentimental encounters with gnarled locals here and no eulogies of primitive food cooked on open fires, though to tell true the interior décor continues to be amusing; but hardly in Fulham taste! I was eyeing the roof plaster the other night as the gale whistled through it trying to detect the major wind faults; and of course at every join of plaster and wood the wind screeches in. It blows so hard that the Japanese paper lights bounce around as though out at sea.
Sarn is far from any dreams of Corsican or Provencal homes; though we do have Fennel and Sorrel in the garden and the sea is probably prettier in winter than in Tizzano.
We have, too, rejected living in Samui. Too small, no water, too may Europeans, nasty houses. Good for holidays but not to live. Phuket also: been there, done that, also no water and too many tourists.. Anyway one of these days a tidal wave will wash away Patong.
We might go to Hua Hin, but I think we will opt for Bangkok or Chiang Mai in the winter and Romans/Tournon in the summer
