Banda Aceh, Indonesia - I am sitting at one of Aceh's mass graves.  It lies on the road from the airport.  The day after the tsunami hit, this was one of the first things that CNN encountered.

Women attend a mass prayer for victims of the 2004 tsunami on Friday in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

Our cameraman, Neil Bennett filmed a bulldozer piling bodies atop each other into one giant pit. That night, as we sat together comparing notes on the destruction we saw, I remember former CNN Correspondent Mike Chinoy was visibly disturbed by what he had seen here.  "Like something out of the Holocaust", I remember him saying.

And it's true.  There were too many bodies. The mass graves buried those that could be collected. But so many more were still lying in the streets, sometimes wedged into the buildings that survived. Bodies broken and bloated.  And no matter where you went it reeked of death.

Today, the grass has grown over the gravesite.  There is a small monument with a plaque. A stylized wall in the shape of a giant wave looms over the site.

People trickle in to say prayers.  It is a simple thing. There don't bring flowers or wreaths or anything at all.  They just walk up to the site, bow their heads and turn their palms up to the sky in Muslim prayer.

There is no crying. It has been five years past, after all.  When they finish praying, they turn around and ride away on their motorcycles to continue their day.

Posted by: Atika Shubert, CNN Correspondent
Filed under: Asia •Indonesia •Natural Disasters