But Lee Moonsim said she was haunted by memories rather than ghosts as she guided her first tour group to Phi Phi since the tsunami.

Wrestling with the trauma of losing both colleagues and clients when the waves crashed across these idyllic shores was enough to give her pause before coming back.

With tourist arrivals on Thailand's main holiday island of Phuket slumping by more than half in the first six months of the year, Thailand has pushed hard to attract visitors back to the beaches that were ravaged one year ago.

But like other tourist hotspots in the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, it has struggled to overcome the horrifying images of the destruction.

Steep discounts in tour packages lured about 500 South Koreans to join Moonsim's tour of southern Thailand that included a stay on the still-damaged shores of this island that was made famous in the Hollywood film "The Beach".

"I think that people still mind spending their vacation here, but now they are getting over it," Moonsim said, as her group lounged in the shade of the partially reconstructed Phi Phi Island Cabana hotel.

"Some people said they had a bad dream or something" while sleeping on the island, she said, adding that she had received surprisingly few questions from the group about the horror that struck here.

Phi Phi's rebuilding has been unusually slow because of government indecision about how to redevelop the island.

"People are still waiting for the government to decide how to rebuild," said Narawuth Thipraksa, a 21-year-old staffer with Help International Phi Phi, a volunteer group better known as HI Phi Phi.

Some 2,000 tourists have passed through the island to work as volunteers helping with the clean-up.

The number of projects has dropped, especially as many people are forced to wait for the government's new plan for the island, but volunteers still come to help build a memorial park, repair a school, and clean up coral reefs, he said.

But on the nearby isle of Phuket, tourism officials say bookings are around 80 percent this month.

"You can't see (damage from) the tsunami here. It's just like before," said Robert Maslihs, a Latvian tourist who was finishing a holiday in Phi Phi and Phuket.

"For some people, it's a business, too," he said pointing to vendors selling tsunami T-shirts and DVDs.

--- Forgotten beaches --

In Malaysia, the effect of the tsunami had disappeared within six months, said Andy Fong, a member of the Malaysian Association of Hotels.

"The impact of the tsunami was felt in the first-half of 2005," Fong said.

"Guest arrivals have picked up now," he said. "There is no more fear of the sea."

The tourist island of Penang, where he owns a hotel, escaped a direct hit and no foreign tourists died in the waves.

Indonesia's tourism industry was also relatively lightly hit. Although the country suffered the vast majority of the deaths in the tsunami, the waves did not hit Bali, where the bulk of Indonesian tourism is focused.

Aceh, on the northernmost tip of Sumatra island, was the most devastated region. It had already endured nearly 30 years of separatist violence, keeping the scenic province off-limits to mainstream tourism.

"In general, the tsunami did have an impact on tourism but it was negligible -- nothing compared to the 2002 Bali bombs, the SARS outbreak or the bird flu scares," said Meity Robot, the deputy chairwoman of the Indonesian Tourism Society.

"The real victim is Nias, which has world-class surfing beaches and an interesting tribal culture."

Robot said that Nias had remained forgotten, as most aid and assistance was concentrated in Aceh, where more than 130,000 people were killed. Nias had between 1,000 and 2,000 killed in the tsunami -- and then endured a second major quake in March which left about 900 people dead.

"None of the large cruise ships are now stopping in Nias and the few tourists that go there are mostly young ones, only interested in the surf and who go there on an individual basis," Robot said.

In Sri Lanka, pictures of wrecked homes and rubble-strewn beaches used by relief agencies' fundraising drives have backfired on the tourism industry.

The tsunami killed 31,000 people there and left a million homeless, but most of the coast has already been cleared, and only a handful of the 52 hotels damaged remain closed.

Arrivals in Sri Lanka have actually gone up since the tsunami to record a three percent increase to 449,680 in the first 10 months of the year, but officials attributed the increase to journalists, aid workers, and Sri Lankans who have returned home after obtaining citizenship overseas.

"They are usually listed as tourists but they don't stay in hotels," Tourism Ministry Secretary Prathap Ramanujam.

The number of nights foreigners spent in hotels dropped by more than one third, with overall hotel occupancy rates at about 50 percent.

In the Maldives, officials say tourism has been set back by eight years after the tsunami, flooded most of the nation, killing 82 people and displacing seven percent of the population.

This nation of 1,192 coral islands is famed for its white beaches, tranquil waters and world-class diving. For the last three decades, tourism has powered the nation's economy.

But only nine islands were spared from flooding, while 15 of the country's 87 resorts remain closed, according to the Maldivian tourism authority.

The beaches have largely returned to normal, but arrivals this year are expected to drop by about 30 percent, while at least 40 million dollars in income to the government has been lost.

Even with so many tourists staying away from the region, some have never left.

Maggie Luyten, a 50-year-old Belgian, was on holiday at Phuket's famed Patong beach when the tsunami hit. In the aftermath of the waves, she decided to stay.

She bought and renovated a house in Phuket and now rents it out to holidaymakers. She says she's fully booked, and is now renovating a second house.

"I wanted to stay and help people. They need a lot of money. The people (working) on the beach, they live day to day, on 100 or 200 baht. That was my happiness, to help."

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