Resilience in Thailand

A year after the tsunami, Independent reporter Vaudine England visits Phuket and Khao Lak, Thailand, and finds signs of recovery and resilience. She writes:

A stoic pluckiness pervades conversations with bar owners and hoteliers. Moving stories of survival and loss abound across Phuket, but the aim now to move on but not to forget, said Howard Digby-Johns, the owner of a British-style pub in Phuket, the Green Man. "Everybody there will have been through it at some level, some of them quite intensely," he said. "But we have to make the best of it, as we have been doing all year. We all need closure, which is quite hard, exceptionally emotional."