Under(the)water Off(the)road

Under(the)water...off(the)road
April 2005 in Khao Lak, Thailand

I arrived in the outskirts of Khao Lak and registered with a local volunteer agency. They gave me directions into the main area of town where I would be able to find accommodations. I walked down the street toward the Happy Lagoon Bungalows. I passed by an open-air restaurant with no signage. I mistakenly assumed I needed to walk farther down the road to get to the bungalows. There was little else beyond the restaurant other than rubble and laborers reconstructing what once had been a resort area.

This crumpled vehicle will be the image burned into my mind forever of the first personal sense I gained of the true scope of destruction from the tsunami. It was at the end of the street I had walked down looking for my bungalows. Looking to the left and to the right as far as I could see along the coast there was nothing built by human hands that was not destroyed. Yet, in the midst of the rubble that was a testament to the power of nature. There were equal testaments to the power of nature to endure----trees still standing, flowers blooming and bushes growing.

Available as a Matte Print
Size: 11" x 14"
Limited series of 500 prints
Price*: $125 US, excludes shipping

Jason Hill -|- Richmond, Virginia, USA -|- jacehill@mythailandtrip.com -|- 804.545.8955 -|- Site Design by: www.jacehill.com

* Half of the profit will be donated to assist with ongoing tsunami relief efforts in Thailand.

The profit will be determined by taking the overall proceeds from the sales and subtracting the expenses for film processing and framing the images for the shows. The funds will be provided to specific individuals I met on my trip (not organizations) who are still in the Thailand area helping with recovery projects. The individuals receiving the funds are charged with finding locals in need of the funds and dispensing them accordingly for relief projects. [For example, contributions I personally provided to one of these individuals went to paying for school tuition for the daughter of one of the shopkeepers whose store was destroyed in the tsunami. Other such private donations have bought engines for fishing boats, books to replace those lost in the tsunami, etc. My personal experience while in Thailand was the funds being doled out by volunteers who had direct exposure to individuals, in the communities hardest hit by the tsumani, were those funds being best allocated. The volunteers would accompany the tsunami survivor to pay the school fees to the school directly or to buy the engine directly instead of money being handed out.]