South Thailand
5- Bang Niang, tropical markets and tsunami mausoleum
Around Khao Lak, not so easy to locate our memories
The two or three villages near our hotel, are distributed along the main north-south road, road n ° 4, also called Thanon Phet Kasem.
Here, under the strong influence of tourist accommodation, the activity is intense and very needy.
There are dozens of restaurants, tourist shops, tour agencies, tiny colorful cabins which are exchange offices, a few small very air-conditioned supermarkets, local fruit stalls, large sheds under sheet metal which are kinds of clean souks held by Thai people of Malay origin ...
But also beautiful, well-organized local markets.
Many hotels of all categories are scattered along the side streets that lead west to the sea. For to the east abut the short rocky hills that give their name to the region, "khao" (for mountain or relief).
Those on which the 2004 tsunami crashed.
Without ever running out of space ; This is evidenced by the lack of continuity of the facades which elsewhere form streets in our Western sense.
Locating villages on maps and plans from their name alone is quite incomprehensible. All the more so when it only appears in Thai writing.
Once we know that "ban" means house and "mou (-or moo-) ban "means village, that is to say group of houses, we took only a modest step.
Because depending on whether you consult Google Maps, Google Earth or by example Michelin plans and other maps, the location of Khao Lak and Bang Niang, the two villages that interest us, is not the same along Route 4.
Let us decide to rely on three criteria:
- our photographic references,
- the views (2017) of Google Street, which should easily match our photos
- but above all the situation of the two villages as indicated to us by the tuk tuk drivers, taxis, our hotel or the inhabitants themselves.
And let's put aside the administrative vagueness of the division of local constituencies.
From these landmarks, from the north where we come from, we meet Bang Niang (sometimes considered a northern district of Khao Lak) then further south, Khao Lak, before reaching this small peninsula promontory where the road winds in switchbacks overlooking the sea before descending and take back from the coast to the south a course more straight towards Phuket.
In Bang Niang,
two beautiful markets
At the central crossroads of the village along the 4 and its shops, on the sidewalk, a small orchestra of girls plays with seriousness and application pieces of music. A curious impression of constraint emanates from it, as if this seriousness translated an obligation to perform here, in public.
It is specially oriented, in front of the shops where local dishes are prepared and cooked, to welcome the population in the evening, when the sun goes down and the temperature drops a little, but even more so the tourists who flock there, in the smoke. barbecues or cooking stoves.
They then sit down just in front of these stalls, forming tiny and random restaurants that one would think almost spontaneous.
Even if it means running, taking shelter in speed under the evening storm.
Some merchants make their display into real works of art, aligning with the greatest care the fried shrimps, spring rolls, spring rolls and other pinion encrusted pannels.
TO Bang niang stand two beautiful markets organized in complementary schedules: to the north, at a place called Mun Takua, 1300 meters before the center where the tsunami mausoleum is located, then in front of the latter, in the very heart of the village.
From there, about 2800 meters further south, lies the center of the village of Khao Lak.
Bang Niang, less important village than Khao Lak, but whose tourist vocation is well established, presents the originality of its two authentic markets.
In the one in the center of the village, that day under a plaster sky à la Giono, open stalls follow one another under straw huts on the gravel or asphalt floor, offering a multitude of local products, fruits, vegetables, meats of all kinds, fried, dried, grilled fish ... and endless shellfish.
Among the fish, we prepare and cook in particular the famous catfish, which our fishermen disdain in our rivers. Here, much appreciated and accommodated in a thousand and one ways, it's almost a myth culinary.
And reality joins the legend with the famous giant catfish of the Mekong, since in 2005, we caught such a fish 3 meters long and 300 kg. This size in this river is not yet not exceptional.
Not to be confused with catfish, despite a few similarities: barbs, but no adipose fin or sting, ... according to specialists of course.
In front of this profusion of meats and prepared dishes, so diverse and so dense that one would suffocate them, the stalls of tropical fruits bring like a salutary, but very illusory note of freshness.
Perhaps the most uplifting of the stalls is that of the grilled insects, high protein : locusts, grasshoppers, even the silkworm which is in fact the chrysalis of the butterfly ; once ingested, and without being tapeworm, does it become its own worm ?
We would probably taste the tiny grasshoppers or the small locusts, but the enormous chrysalis butterflies, grilled and glistening with fat are rather repulsive.
The other market to the north (Mun Takua) is almost outside the village, facing a small lake along which the royal family, represented in three effigies (the king, perhaps his wife, and a son?) watch in large format.
The probably Buddhist butcher's stall, with chicken and pork, is next to that of fish, discreet, run by Muslim women, head covered with a kerchief which is not a veil.
The pigs' heads, however hilarious of the first, leave the latter indifferent.
More fish, often of remarkable size. Elsewhere, they are sold in pairs, baked, slanted head broken. Curious impression of twin fetuses in their jars as we see in the windows of hospital exhibitions.
On large grills, various other fish this time grilled that distract from the morbid and revive saliva.
Generally in the tropics, meats are there to be cooked as soon as you buy them. : flies fly over stalls and refrigeration is minimal.
The fish is wrapped in a piles of ice cubes which melt very quickly under the oppressive heat of the day, and which are soon nothing more than a bath of still cold water.
Indeed, barring an observation error, no other electricity than for the light in the evening, and a sound system which spreads sorts of rather syrupy local hits from crooners of the country, while waiting for a large nocturnal orchestra whose scene gives an idea. of importance.
Our visits to one and the other of the two markets took place around noon, under a blazing sun which led to breaks for fresh puffs in the enclosure air-conditioned cafe.
It seems to offer products more intended for the local population, with in particular skewers of meat of a great and beautiful diversity, even more attractive by their presentation and the shades of colors affirmed. Appetizing, but if intense spices that you will not risk.
Other skewers seem to be very colorful sweets that shimmer on the stalls next to large and rustic fryers, among which sushi as advertised by the banners.
Are they also takeaway meals, a large cauldron simmering indefinable, long-billed heads of skinned duck or billed fish?
The heat does not exceed 35 ° C, but with a certainly high humidity rate, and without enjoying the benefit usual trade winds, here often discreet.
Sometimes the sky becomes heavy, darkens, darkens very heavily, announcing rain, even a thunderstorm. Others than us had to flee their tables in the wind in order to find shelter.
But these hot rains, which do not yet foreshadow the start of the May-June monsoon, are temporary, and let go of their floodgates in the evening for one to two hours.
The morning is generally clear, or remains at most a little cloudy.
Bang Niang, where is a mausoleum of the 2004 cataclysm
Local devastation from the 2004 tsunami
The Khao Lak region was 80% destroyed by the terrible wave and 3000 people will perish there, 4500 when we expand the area to Phang Nga district.
She is the one who paid one of the heaviest prices for the disaster. Barely masked from the epicenter by the northern Sumatran Peninsula, it was the region of Thailand closest to it, the most exposed, and took full brunt of the murderous wave.
Between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Boxing Day 2004, tourists peacefully finish their breakfast and the Thais have started their working day.
First, astonishment and unbelief, the sea retreats very far, up to 1 km they say, releasing an immensity of sand; some curious people advance amused or stunned towards this great silent void, while, sensing the threat, the animals flee towards the heights.
Over there at the epicenter, in the immense tectonic fracture which has given way engulfs the sea, which fills it at dizzying speed, creating a gigantic hydraulic overpressure, followed by a sort of rebound effect, the shock wave which is launched at the speed of 800 km / h. From 50 cm in the middle of the ocean, arriving towards the coasts where the sea floor rises, if its speed is slowed down to be limited to 50 km / h, the wave thus created will reach up to 35 meters high when striking Sumatra.
Penetrating from the side, after having crossed an arm of a stream, here we are on the site where the military boat "813", 20 meters long and a few tons was thrown, then kept intact to testify.
Small neighboring stalls sell all kinds of local handicrafts.
Returning two steps to the south, a modern mausoleum has been erected in memory of the victims of the cataclysm.
For such a phenomenon, so infrequent that the memory of generations forgets it, the situation was certainly unprecedented and dramatic.
However, the small Indonesian island of Simeulue, very close to the epicenter, only had to deplore a few dozen victims, unlike Banda Aceh for example.
The natives indeed knew very well the warning signs: big earthquake, receding sea, flight of animals ... the island had already been hit in 1907 by a tsunami which had killed 1,800 people here. This memory has been passed down from generation to generation, which explains a very limited record.
In this unstable part of the world, one can understand that collective memories, in the absence of today's data centers, are struggling to remember for example the 1883 tsunami caused by the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano between Java and Sumatra, which killed 36,000 people.
But the world and the region should have at least learn from the three tsunamis of July 1998, caused by two submarine earthquakes causing more than 2,000 deaths on the north coast of Papua New Guinea.
On the other side of the road, which when crossing the village is two-way in each direction, a stele marks the access to the tsunami mausoleum.
The mention of "park" of the memorial is disproportionate to the scale real place of memory.
So 20 to 30 minutes after the withdrawal of the ocean in Khao Lak, strong waves, like those of an improbable storm under a clear sky reach the coast.
Then something happens on the horizon, which thickens, grows evenly A wall of water arrives, which we only feel too late irresistible force.
The noise is said to be that of a "landing fighter plane".
Over a depth of 2 to 3 km, from the coast to the foot of the small eastern mountains, houses, hotels, restaurants, everything is submerged, often destroyed, Route 4 flooded. Living beings are carried away, thrown, shattered, crushed like all moving objects, even heavy ones.
The wall of water will come down here for about 1 hour between 10 and 11 a.m.
This is also how the military boat "813" which protected the visit to an island of the daughter of the then king. ( in the "Flora Resort" were "His Royal Highness Ubolratana Rajakanya Siriwaddhana Phannawadee ", his son and his daughters ) a nautical mile offshore found himself swept away like a toy and finally drossed at the foot of the hill, 2 km inland.
NB- However, only his son, autistic, present on the site seems to have succumbed to the tsunami at the age of 21.
The striking videos taken of the phenomenon show the poignant cruelty of unconsciousness: some tourists, who we could have been, film peacefully, then, suddenly feeling the threat without understanding it the cause, flee somehow, often children, some finally caught up in the monstrous wave. Others gaze dumbfounded at the cataclysm from the top of their room, in their resisting hotel.
All the efforts to replant and rebuild have borne fruit, since the region is benefiting from a remarkable tourist boom. During the 10th anniversary of the event, 11 billion euros had been collected.
Despite the group's lyricism, we preferred in Sri Lanka, also affected by this tsunami, the very modest house museum, just north of Hikkadua, where are displayed in a long and intense litany from one room to another the terrible photos of the cataclysm, in a minimal setting that gives, with a few essential comments, more force to the emotion.
A modern museum that we will not visit presents the history of the cataclysm, its terrible consequences.
On the sand, at the bottom of Khao Lak beach, set against the shore between the enormous rasta heads formed by the stumps of recumbent palm trees, a probable testimony to the upheavals of the 2004 tsunami.
It's about on the ground of a block of cut stone arrived there, bearing inscriptions in Thai language .
Perhaps it was attached to the front of a house or was it torn from a grave?
In any case, the signs indicating the direction to take to evacuate the premises in the event of a tsunami are clearly apparent.
The refuges are either from neighboring natural heights, or a kind of watchtower on high stilts specially erected, which we can hope that they would withstand the blows of the next big wave.
What appears as the heart even from the village is a square tiled with large diagonal checkers, ostensibly decorated with a fountain.
There, set back from the street, stands a large air conditioned building which is a small supermarket.
The square is framed by recent buildings, painted in bright and funny colors, between which a raw purple almost brings a violent tone.
Tropical chromatic tropisms: wherever you go in these latitudes, the colors of the buildings are vivid, but you can see it here in different harmonies. The charm of the Caribbean palette, despite the liberties it takes, is distinguished from colorful contrasts from here.
Going towards the center of Bang Niang, a gallery under arcades seems disused. Welcoming steps for a little snack.
