Anchored to dark memories

They are ships that fell from the sky; two immovable objects, their very presence defying reason. Residents call them acts of God.

Most cannot fathom that the two ocean vessels were transported kilometres inland by flood waters of the 2004 tsunami that ravaged the small city of Banda Aceh on Sumatra's northern tip.

Kilometres apart, both have been left intact as memorials to the 170,000 residents of Aceh province who were lost in the catastrophe. One is revered as a Noah's Ark, a 100-foot wooden boat that crashed down on top of a house, providing refuge for 59 people who insist they would have died without its shelter.

The other is stranger still — a colossal vessel weighing 2,600 tonnes that plopped down about four kilometres inland.

The tsunami cut a swath through South East Asia, devastating coastal towns and villages in Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Triggered by a major deep-sea earthquake about 130 kilometres off the coast of Banda Aceh, the wall of water hit at 8am on December 26, 2004, leaving death and wreckage in its wake.

Bustamam, 45, was at home with family when the earthquake hit. Within moments, he heard the cries of neighbours.

"The water is coming!" they shouted. "We were all running in fear when the first wave came," he recalled. "I was holding my 5-year-old as tightly as I could. But my head was hit by a piece of wood. I don't remember what happened next. But when I came to my senses, my little girl was gone."

His wife, Ani Maulani, said she and the couple's other two children were swept to the roof of a house 300 feet away. When the apocalypse subsided, she took a breath to consider her new surroundings. And there it was, towering 60 feet above the poor, low-lying neighbourhood.

"At first, I thought it was some big house," she recalled. The Apung, a power-generating ship owned by the local electrical company, was carried about four kilometres inland, where it crashed down atop two houses, killing the inhabitants.

Now it is one of Banda Aceh's biggest tourist attractions. Passing souvenir shops, visitors climb a series of metal gangplanks to the top of the craft, covered with red-and-white Indonesian flags and advertisements for shampoo and cigarettes.

One afternoon, Bustamam boarded the ship. Standing by an air duct dotted with graffiti, he pointed to the sea. "Over there," he said of the boat, "that's where it came from." His wife said she had no intention of ever boarding the monster: Just too many memories. "I know it will give me a heart attack and make me think of my lost daughter," she said. "I'm already sad enough."

Several kilometres away, in another tsunami-struck neighbourhood, officials left the so-called Noah's Ark ship in its new landlocked mooring out of a sense of reverence. Years after it landed here, the wooden boat resembles a child's discarded toy, cocked at an angle atop a forlorn house.

On a recent morning, workers scraped and painted the ship's exterior, a refurbishment project leading up to the fifth-anniversary ceremony.

Next door, sitting on a porch cradling her grandson, Basyariah Nurdin recalled the day the boat dropped down on Banda Aceh. She and her neighbours were running from the flood, taking shelter on the second floor of a house. But soon the waters rose to their necks, she said.

Suddenly, they heard a sound "like thunder". Moments later, fearing they were about to drown, they broke through the ceiling to reach the safety of the roof.

Instead of finding daylight, they found a boat. "We stayed there for seven hours, until the waters went down," Nurdin said. "I don't think we would be here today if it weren't for that boat."