January 2, 2005
Thailand's tsunami tourists pose with disaster
Camera phones provided some of the first pictures from tsunami hit countries, providing a terrifying immediacy.
"But the sheer scale of the destruction and death along Thailand's southwest beaches revealed a darker side of human nature on Sunday, with thousands of onlookers and volunteer workers like 29-year-old Naulchawee posing for a photo with history.
Last week's tsunami, the world's worst natural disaster in decades, has stunned those who have witnessed its aftermath, but it has also got them reaching for their cameras and binoculars.
People come from hundreds of km (miles) around to gawp at it.
[...] Further north, the road into the fishing village of Ban Namkhem, where Naulchawee is looking for bodies, is choked with onlookers, edging forward in their cars for a closer look. Most have parked and are walking, cameras slung over their shoulders.
Naulchawee, from northern Thailand, and her fellow workers are taking each other's photo with cameras and mobile phones in the shade of a tamarind tree, where they have laid out the bodies of six children. The tourists file past and into the village".
[via Reuters ]
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