Thailand’s free-diving sea gypsies battle for survival after fire razes their village

After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami destroyed the previous Moken settlement in Thailand’s Andaman Sea, Hook says, people were able to recover some belongings. This time, when fire broke out on February 3 this year, nothing was left.

Now the community fears for the future as the authorities begin to reconstruct the village in Au Bon Yai bay, in its original design, using an unsafe housing model consisting of highly flammable structures, densely packed together. And it has reignited a row about the Moken’s rights to their ancestral lands.

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