Psycho Sensei

A CNN report from a US woman scuba diving in Thailand tells of the US Consulate demanding payment for passport pictures before they'd issue new documentation for victims to return to the United States. If they hadn't kept their ATM card on board the dive boat, I wonder what would have happened to them and to the others for whom they coughed up the money.

From CNN.com via
Peggy Bowen, Director
New Jersey Council of Diving Clubs
American diver underwater during catastrophe
Wednesday, December 29, 2004 Posted: 7:12 AM EST (1212 GMT)

(CNN) -- An American woman who was scuba diving with her husband in Thailand
as one of Sunday's tsunamis roared overhead said she was oblivious to the
disaster until after they surfaced, her mother told CNN on Tuesday.

Faye Wachs, 34, was diving with her husband, Eugene Kim, Sunday morning off
Ko Phi Phi Island in Thailand when they noticed the water visibility
worsened and felt as though they were being sucked downward, Helen Wachs
said.

Their dive master signaled to them to surface, "but we still didn't know
what happened," Faye wrote in an e-mail to her mother Tuesday.

The enormity of what was happening while they were scuba diving was not
immediately apparent after they surfaced, Helen Wachs said her daughter told
her. "She said she saw a lot of trash in the water. The dive master said it
was really rude for people to throw trash. Then they saw large bits of
debris and thought there might have been a boat crash," Helen Wachs said.

She said her daughter didn't know what had happened until the dive master
got a text message from his wife telling him about the catastrophe.

Soon they saw bodies floating past them, Wachs' mother said in an interview
from Oakland, California, where she lives.

Once they returned to shore, the couple did what they could to help, Helen
Wachs said. "I can't describe carrying a moaning person who just saw his
girlfriend killed down a hill in the middle of the night," the e-mail said.
"I saw more bodies than I care to report. The hotel where we were staying is
mostly gone. We lost everything, but our lives."

Faye Wachs said she was impressed by the efforts of the Thai government and
the International Committee for the Red Cross, but "she was appalled at the
treatment they got" from the U.S. government, her mother said. At the
airport in Bangkok, other governments had set up booths to greet nationals
who had been affected and to help repatriate them, she said.

That was not the case with the U.S. government, Wachs told her mother. It
took the couple three hours, she said, to find the officials from the
American consulate, who were in the VIP lounge.

Because they had lost all their possessions, including their documentation,
they had to have new passports issued. But the U.S. officials demanded
payment to take the passport pictures, Helen Wachs said.

The couple had managed to hold on to their ATM card, so they paid for the
photos and helped other Americans who did not have any money get their
pictures taken and buy food, Helen Wachs said. "She was really very
surprised" that the government did so little to ease their ordeal, she said.

Helen Wachs said her daughter told her they would need "some serious
counseling" upon their return to Los Angeles.

Once aboard the plane, Wachs told her mother, the biggest thing they noticed
was the absence of the stench of raw sewage that had permeated the air.
"She said the clean smell was amazing."

Wachs, who described herself as "shell-shocked but happy to be coming home,"
is scheduled to arrive Wednesday morning in Los Angeles, her mother said.
She returns acutely aware that many thousands of others don't have that
option. "The tourists are able to get out, but those there are left with
utter destruction," Helen Wachs said.