The tears rolling down her cheeks, Somsee Malachai, one of Thailand's tsunami survivors, contemplates a desperate future.
"Where is the money?" the 42-year-old cries, sitting alone in her tent at a makeshift camp for those devastated by the killer waves. "They talk about money on the television, but I never see it. Where is the money?"
Although the numbers of tsunami victims in Thailand - 5,309 dead and 3,370 missing - are relatively low compared to Sri Lanka or Indonesia, the struggle to survive for those whose communities have been washed away could be just as tough.
The Thai government has promised aid and assistance but little appears to have filtered through yet to the Khao Lak camp, rows upon rows of tents in a dusty forest clearing close to the devastated southwest coastline. Small children lie listlessly in the shade, trying to avoid the sweltering midday heat, while aid workers put up shanty-style plywood huts for survivors from the nearby fishing village of Ban Namkhem, which was all but wiped off the map.
The promised government handouts have not arrived. "I got 1,000 (baht) from the chief of my district chief," said Aalasai Panalan, 35, referring to the equivalent of $25. "We need more support from the government."
A feeling of resentment is also growing towards the assistance offered to the many foreigners and holidaymakers who were also hit by the tsunami.
"People are saying that when the army and police got here to help people, they took care of the foreigners first, then the Thai people," Mr Alasai said.
Christian aid workers are busily trying to build facilities such as toilets and housing for the camp, which is already taking on an air of depressing permanence. Few underestimate the seriousness of the plight of the hundreds of people there.
"It's a hopeless situation," said Mark Hopson, 21, a Christian volunteer from Biola University in Los Angeles. "These people have lost half of the people they knew on the entire planet. They can't spend a lot of time here."
A few miles down the road, enormous diesel-powered pumps empty a fetid lagoon close to the beach, so rescuers can look for bodies of the missing more than two weeks after the disaster. The spectacle attracts a crowd, some there simply because they have nothing better to do, others because it has become a daily ritual in a quest for missing loved ones.
"I come here every day, looking for my wife. I have no idea where she is," said one man, sitting astride a motorbike, his empty eyes gazing across the water.
The tsunami destroyed about half of the fishing boats in Ban Namkhem, as well as maybe one-third of the fishermen, but those lucky enough to emerge with both their lives and boats do not count themselves as fortunate.
"If possible, I want to start up a convenience store," said 59-year-old fisherman Somkid Sukkul, wandering through the wreckage of his village in second-hand clothes donated by an aid agency.
"I never want to fish in the sea again. I'm scared. I don't want to go out any more."