A helicopter plucked a young Belgian man from the beach in Khao Lak. He has no idea how or why he survived Sunday's tragic tsunami -- he just had good luck. When he saw the wave crashing onto the island's beach, he climbed through the palm trees and scaled a hill as fast as he could. From there, he watched in horror as the killer wave -- traveling at a speed of hundreds of kilometres per hour -- swept away boats, people and anything that stood in its path.

On Tuesday, he lucked out again as the helicopter transported him from an uninhabited island to the mainland. He was running out of things to eat -- there was little else to find other than leaves, roots and a few pieces of fruit.

The Belgian man is one of many -- Thai rescue workers are transporting countless survivors from the islands along the holiday coast to the mainland. But they fear the number of dead may surpass those who survived. Thousands of tourists had travelled to the islands during the Christmas holidays to pep up their lives with a little Robinson Crusoe style living, and stunning Khao Lak beach has become the face of the tourist side of the tragedy. The beaches here are gorgeous, and unlike other Thai hotspots there is little in the way of strip bars and vice. As a result, families flock to the area's luxury hotels. At the time of Sunday's tidal wave, an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 tourists were vacationing here, enjoying the sun, sea and friendly atmosphere. A disproportionate number of the vacationers came from Scandinavia and Germany, all seeking escape from the dark winters back home.

Then came the nightmare

Then it turned into a scene out of a horror movie. The upscale Sofitel resort that once stood here has completely disappeared, taking with it most of its 415 guests -- only 135 are confirmed to have survived. The Buddhist temple here has been turned into a station for depositing the bodies that are washing up on shore by the hundreds each day. On Monday there were 400 and on Tuesday 300. With temperatures of 35 degrees, the decomposition process is already beginning and public health officials worry disease could soon spread. Many bodies will have to be buried before they can be identified, and workers here are taking DNA samples with cotton swabs so they can later be processed. The district police chief, Col. Aroon Klaewvatee estimated Wednesday the total death toll here could rise to 3,000.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 9 off the coast of Sumatra on Sunday triggered the massive tsunami, which wreaked devastation on at least 11 countries and left close to 80,000 dead. Hard-hit Indonesia has already reported 45,268 officially dead and Sri Lanka 22,500. India has counted 7,000 (with up to 8,000 feared dead on the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands) and Thailand at least 1,800, with that figure expected to grow dramatically. The tidal wave also killed more than a hundred people thousands of miles away in the African countries of Somalia, Seychelles, Kenya and Tanzania.

Behind the grim statistics, there are also stories of hope here, including that of Hannes Bergstrom, the sparkling blond Swedish toddler whose picture was posted on the Internet and broadcast on television worldwide after his rescue from the tsunami by a Thai villager. He has since been reunited with his extended family, but his mother is missing and his father is at another hospital.

Right now, the Thais are using a single helicopter to rescue people from the islands -- it can transport seven people at a time and it's been flying non-stop. Since Tuesday afternoon, the Thais have also dispatched trucks and soldiers into the area. But it's mostly volunteers from Thai disaster relief organizations who are managing the rescue effort. So far there has been little, if any, help from Germany -- at least according to interviews conducted by SPIEGEL ONLINE with dozens of tourists here. The aid organizations here are providing assistance where they can, and Internet sites set up by hospitals and tourists alike have become clearinghouses for information about deaths, injuries and survivors.

Germans criticize government and stinginess of travel operators

Criticism among surviving vacationers here is growing. There isn't enough aid available and the bureaucracy has proven to be a major hurdle. Worse yet, some German diplomats and travel companies have failed to demonstrate the humanity and generosity one might expect after a calamity of this magnitude.

In some cases, the German Embassy here has been downright unhelpful. Take, for example, the story of Michael Foerster: the embassy offered the now pennyless tourist help in getting home but refused to do anything for his wife because she holds a Columbian passport. Columbia doesn't have a consulate in the Phuket region, and the couple are essentially stranded.

Teary-eyed German vacationer Lothar Schlidt told SPIEGEL ONLINE that after he was rescued in a Khao Lak temple, he tried to board the buses that had been brought in by the package vacation companies Thomas Cook and Neckermann. But because he hadn't booked his trip with either of the companies, the drivers refused to let him ride along to Phuket City -- despite the fact that there was still space on bus. In the end, the injured man found his own way to the Bangkok Phuket Hospital.

Other vacationers have also reported that the travel companies that brought them here are completely overwhelmed and are providing insufficient help to their customers. The people here are in a terrible state of shock and many have nothing more than clothing people have donated to them. One thing you've been hearing universally, however, is how kind and helpful the local Thai population has been to the injured and stranded, despite their own tragic losses.

Communication is also proving to be a tremendous problem -- both technologically and linguistically. Those who are able to get to telephones are often confronted with a network that is overloaded, and every call requires a colossal level of patience. Having lost their material possessions, mobile phones and address books, many injured and exhausted tourists don't even have numbers to call. For them, the shock of what happened here has become a struggle to get out.

There's a reception camp in northwest of Phuket City where foreigners are gathering to register, find out about missing friends and family and get food. But it's shoddily organized. Names of the missing are written on cardboard or scraps of paper. A Thai information hotline is constantly busy and if people manage to get through, there's often someone who can't speak English at the other end of the line. Stranded tourists are also running into problems because of the lack of transportation here and the fact that many Thais don't speak much English.