When the tsunami struck Thailand's Andaman coast in December 2004, Olov Carlsson feared it would be a day of infamy for the resort town of Khao Lak.
'I am worried that Khao Lak will be synonymous with a disaster area, that the name will have a mark on it, like places such as Auschwitz or Srebrenica or Beirut,' the bungalow owner told Swedish television after the catastrophe. 'Without the tourists, Khao Lak will die.'
Less than three years on, Carlsson and Khao Lak are both revived. 'This year Khao Lak is doing quite well,' he says. 'From what I hear, it's basically booked out.'
Few people know Khao Lak's tourist industry as well as Carlsson. When the Swede first arrived here as a backpacker in 1988, it was just a string of fishing villages. That year, he built the first tourist bungalows in the area and soon established the first dive centre, spawning a booming industry around the now world-renowned dive sites of the Similan Islands. When the tsunami struck he was in his Poseidon Bungalows restaurant, which was destroyed along with the reception building and five huts.
'But everybody survived here; it was the only place on the beach in Khao Lak where everybody survived. We were quite lucky,' he says.
Indeed they were. Immediately north of Phuket, Khao Lak was the hardest-struck area in Thailand, with the tsunami killing 4,225 people in and around the province. Waves rose to almost 14 metres, rolling over the land to the foot of the mountains behind the town. One hundred of its 143 resorts were damaged or destroyed. Two dolphins were later found in a lagoon 1km from the coast.