Todd: Hello, can you introduce yourself please?

Tarta: Yes. My name is Tarta, I am from Thailand. I live in the southern part, in the east coast.

 

Todd: So Tarta, you were in Thailand when you had the "tsunami"?

 

Tarta: Yes, I was right back from my Laos trip with my family on the way, because we drive car. We go by car to Laos and then on the way back, then we drive back on to the Seven. Then we saw on the news on television that like the "tsunami" hit on the west coast and first we thought like we watching the documentary, that it is somewhere else, not in Thailand but then suddenly it is getting more serious and then ... it's a really sad story ... and 26 it happened and 27, because living not really far away from Phuket and also I really want to go and help them. But then my Dad didn't allow me because they say the 27 it gonna have the aftershock, so we wait until the 28th. And then my uncle, my Dad's friend, he have a small company and he really want to help so brought two vans, with one van full of food, like lunchbox for maybe 300 packs, and then lots of necessary stuff like the medicines or water and all those kinds of stuff. So we drove to Phuket and then tried to, you know, distribute all the food as much as we can, even though we have no idea where we are. actually that time there were not many volunteers still, so we were following ... follow with the other radio staff, local radio staff who really want to help as well. So we went up into the hills, where the people move up because they are afraid of the "aftershock". So we went there and then there were, like, our villagers around 210 people who were waiting for food because they ... they were living there without any food or water for two days already. So we went there, like, try to provide as much as we can, like all the food that we had and then it was very sad because what you see, it's like nothing from T.V. you know.