Saved by a snooze - HK couple cherish family life despite tsunami memories
Newlyweds enjoying late lie-in on honeymoon escaped deadly tsunami at beach resort on west coast of Phuket a decade ago
A morning snooze saved two Hong Kong honeymooners in Phuket from the Indian Ocean tsunami ten years ago, but the disaster has made them treasure their family life all the more.
Yum Kwok-tung and his new wife Annie Or Pui-lei were resting after breakfast on Boxing Day 2004, when they noticed the temperature in their hotel room had risen and the power had failed.
The couple stepped outside, heard people shouting and saw dripping wet tourists running up from the beach with leaves and other debris hanging in their hair.
“If the tsunami had happened in the afternoon or evening we would have been lost.”
“If the tsunami had happened in the afternoon or evening we would have been lost, because we went to the beach every afternoon,” Yum said.
The newlyweds were staying at the Kamala Bay Terrace Resort on the west coast of Phuket, Thailand, occupying a ground floor room in a hillside block around 100 metres from the coast.
Parts of the hotel at sea level, including the reception and a restaurant, were heavily damaged by the tsunami. Some members of staff had even been killed by the sudden surge of water, Yum said.
Or, who was in the early stages of pregnancy at the time, said that after their return to Hong Kong footage of the tsunami scared her, but these “dark feelings” had reduced over time.
Yum and Or now have a son Thomas, 9, and a daughter Constance, 6.
“Now I treasure time with the family and relationships because I can control this, but I can’t control what will happen in the world,” she said.
Yum says his work as a district councillor in Kowloon City has shown him that the couple’s experience of the tsunami was fleeting, while his constituents face a daily struggle.
“The tsunami happened for a few minutes and after that we were safe, but we need to face the situation in Hong Kong everyday when we get out of bed and go to work” said Yum. “The pressure here is much harsher than the tsunami.”
More than 225,000 people were killed after a magnitude 9.1 earthquake hit near Sumatra on the morning of 26 December 2004, triggering the tsunami that swept across the region.
At least 5 million people across parts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Maldives, the Seychelles and Myanmar, were affected by the natural disaster.
One year after the tsunami, the Hong Kong government confirmed 38 of its residents had been killed in the disaster and a further two remained unaccounted for.
Hotel staff at the resort were absent for hours after the disaster, the couple said, but a fellow guest had a radio and shared news about the tsunami.
“We stayed in our room a long time, we didn’t know what was happening, but we could see the water coming in and out,” said Or.
Another couple used towels to write SOS on the hillside before help arrived, said Yum.
Later that day, people on scooters brought cooked rice for guests at the hotel, but that was the only help they received.
The day after the tsunami, staff at the resort moved guests to a nearby property that had not yet opened for business.
The couple has kept a bottle of water from each hotel they stayed in as a memento of the shocking events.
