Asia marks tsunami's fifth anniversary with prayers

The gathering of monks in Ban Nam Khem, a small fishing village on Thailand's Andaman Sea coast that lost nearly half its 5,000 people, was one of hundreds of solemn events across Asia in memory of the towering waves that crashed ashore with little warning on December 26, 2004, killing 226,000 people in 13 countries.

(...) In Indonesia's Banda Aceh, survivors gathered in neighborhood mosques or homes on the eve of the anniversary to remember those killed by the wall of water as high as 30 meters triggered by an undersea earthquake off the island of Sumatra.

Indonesia was the worst hit with the number of dead and missing over 166,000. Massive reconstruction aid in Banda Aceh has rebuilt a new city on top of the ruins, and many survivors are only now putting memories of the waves behind them.

(...) Thailand's Ban Nam Khem village is a shadow of its former self. Its once-thriving center of dense waterfront stores, restaurants and wooden homes is gone, replaced with souvenir shops, a wave-shaped monument and a small building filled with photographs of the tsunami recovery effort.

Many former residents are now too frightened of the sea to rebuild close to the water.

(...) In Thailand, 5,398 people were killed, including several thousand foreign tourists, when the waves swamped six coastal provinces, turning some of the world's most beautiful beaches into mass graves. Many are still missing.

In Patong, a Thai beach resort village bustling with tourists, local artists performed traditional Thai songs and Buddhist monks chanted as tourists and locals gathered in a pavilion to look at photographs of the tsunami's damage. A candlelight vigil was planned for evening.

"We come and stay here because we are alive," said Ruschitschka Adolf, a 73-year-old German who survived the tsunami, as his wife Katherina waded into Patong's turquoise waters to lay white roses in the waves in memory of the dead.

Almost all of those killed were vacationing on or around the southern island of Phuket, a region that had contributed as much as 40 percent of Thailand's annual tourism income.