"This is Pearl. I am currently in Bangkok waiting for a flight I have cajoled my way onto. I am one of the survivors. With only scratches, briuses and infections I am fine. Everything I own (almost - a small plastic jesus doll made it through!) is gone. My house was wiped out, as were 3000 hotel rooms, around 600 other resident/vacation homes and almost all the business' in the area.

Our house was 150 feet from the beach, that is THE hardest hit beach in Thailand. As water rushed into our house and then ripped open the second story wall, I leapt off our second story roof and swam and swam and swam, riding the wave deep into the jungle, as it destroyed building after building, ripping up trees and spinning diesel trucks into the air. All this with me in the center of it clinging to anything that floats and swimming to avoid the standing buildings or trees that crushed and impaled many others. The wave deposited me, a small swedish girl and a 60 foot poilice cruiser (medium sized steel patrol boat - around 20 tons) 1 kilometer from the beach - in the jungle.

For the next 5 hours i set up a triage center and cared for dead and dying foreigners. Finally we got helicopters in, and I made my way back towards the main town. I found Karin (my girlfriend) and collapsed. We had both assumed each other dead as the destruction was so massive. She had climbed a coconut tree, wrapped her arms and legs and held on. The water kept pullng the tree and her under, but it and she survived. That day I saw around 100 bodies. The next day, another 200, and the day we left there were cattle trucks full of rotting corpses being taken to Phuket.

After days of no news, dwindling food and water - a group of divers virtually kidnapped a driver to take us away. Every few hours someone had created a rumor that another wave was coming, or there was a gas explosion, or the Muslim rebels were attacking. None were true, but it caused massive panic and killed many more people. We were already under massive psychological strain, and this just made it insane. We ran.

My town is gone. There are probably 2% of the original buildings in a recognizable form. I am very lucky to even be making my way home. The U.S. goverment offered me a phone call, a toothbrush, a paperback book and a temporary passport. No hotel, no food, no flight home. I was told that I could take out a loan if I could list three people who would vouch for me at home. The process would only take a few days. I was alone, injured (superficially - but I sure did look bad), no possesions, no money and my government offered me a book.

I don't know who or what to acknowledge for my presence. That will take a lot of soul-searching. I am certainly among the luckiest people in Thailand right now. According to local news it looks like my town had a SURVIVAL rate of 60%. Please think of what you value. Look around, have you given a hug to someone recently? Anyone? If everything you had were taken away, who would you turn too? In the end it is each other, not the things, that make the world spin. I won't ever forget that.

(If you want to download any of these, click on any photo, then click the small "All Sizes" button to the left, and you will be given size options.)

nice

Think about it: the microbus is about community and family. The whole idea is about traveling around together with a group of people, in a vehicle designed to allow them to go anywhere they want without depending on the availability of expensive hotels and restaurants. This is simply a good thing, and it represents an approach to traveling that should be encouraged. The image of the treehugger-hippie van with smoke pouring from it is a fading cliché. But the image of the lone soccer mom cruising around the grocery store parking lot in a Hummer that gets 7 miles to the gallon is all too common. The entire SUV trend represents a devotion to excess which, in light of our current conflict in the middle east and our near-total dependence on foreign oil, should be appalling. Need I mention this? It is true that Volkswagen is wise to not introduce a new microbus to a market currently obsessed with pointlessly huge, fuel-inefficient luxury vehicles driven not by families but by lone commuters, grocery moms and single guys with penis envy. But it is also true that world oil reserves are dwindling, and in order to free ourselves from dependence on non-renewable resources we should be encouraging a market of alternate fuels and hybrid or electric cars. Meanwhile, we could just as easily pile into a microbus.

But all this aside, I just like cruising around in ‘em. Especially with my John Lennon sunglasses on.

Window Seat decodes the sights to be seen on any flight across North America. Broken down by region, this handy little softcover book features 70 aerial photographs; a fold-out map of North America showing major flight paths; profiles of each region covering its landforms, waterways, and cities; tips on spotting major and not-so-major sights; and straightforward, friendly text on cloud shapes, weather patterns, the continent's history, and more.