There seems to be a recent pattern of visiting sites of human suffering but my visit to Aceh province in Northern Sumatra was to go diving around the north western most point of Indonesia, the island of Pulau Weh.
In Banda Aceh I visited the new Tsunami museum, the video and photos of the destruction of the town was beyond anything I have seen on the news at the time. The earth quake caused everyone to leave buildings and gather in the streets, then all of a sudden the water surge washed in around the buildings. Thousands of lives would have been saved if people had moved to the top of the buildings.
I drove down the west coast, the area of the greatest destruction and the coastline has been changed forever. What I saw was dead palm tree lagoons and new housing estates built on flattened hill tops. The rugged coastline, where the mountains meet the Indian Ocean, has been changed forever and so the lives of the people. One thing is unchanged, it is a beautiful part of the world.
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