Mirissa, Sri Lanka - It is not hard to see what happened five years ago in southern and eastern Sri Lanka. About 34,000 people died in this small South Asian country. Wreckage of the tsunami is still apparent and in some places seems to have grown to be part of the landscape. Fishing boats dropped along roadsides still lay there, some now sprouting grass and plants. In the southern town of Mirissa, locals and tourists enjoy the beaches, barely noticing the partial hull of a fishing boat. 

A woman remembers victims of the 2004 tsunami with flowers and candles in Peraliya, Sri Lanka, on Saturday.

Here workers are busy building a monument not to the tsunami, but to soldiers of Sri Lanka's recent victory in the war with rebel Tamil Tigers.  Many Sri Lankans are too young to remember a time when their country wasn’t at war. The conclusion of more than 25 years of civil war, and decades of terrorist bombings around the country draws their focus now.

Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa has called for an election two years before the conclusion of his term. Now that the war is over, Sri Lanka's economy needs attention: There is concern about Sri Lanka's economy and rising food prices.

In the years since the tsunami, the hordes of aid workers and well-meaning benefactors have drifted on leaving signs of renewal in some places and dried up expectations in others. Scatterings of foreign-built playgrounds, new schools and housing can be seen along the roadsides of southern and eastern Sri Lanka, the most tsunami devastated parts of the country.  Locals will say money is sorely needed for schools and the few apartment buildings are not liked by locals, since they were not used to living in such clusters.

In a village just outside Hikkaduwa, women wait for rides sitting on the remains of someone's kitchen counter.

This town was among the most devastated. Here a memorial shows an artist’s rendering of the horrifying aftermath when the deadly wave overturned a passing train, bodies strewn on the tracks and flung into trees. The train line still runs along the shore.

Go to the beaches in Yala on Sri Lanka's eastern shore and you will see a heartbreakingly beautiful beach.  

Stories abound about how the animals of Yala's National Park sensed the vibrations of the earthquake and ran inland before disaster struck.  On the beach here, is a memorial to the Japanese and German tourists and many locals who had no such warning.

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.

On the day the tsunami struck, we rushed to the airport and boarded a flight for Aceh. 

Two young boys look at parts of the city previously devastated by the Asian 2004 tsunami.

The death toll at first was ridiculously small: 60 people, I remember the radio saying. But it climbed quickly. 60 became 600 became 6000 in the space of a few hours as news filtered in. 

We did not know then that it would climb past 200,000.

As we flew over North Sumatra, all the passengers craned their necks to look out the plane windows. I remember seeing coconut trees flattened like scattered toothpicks on the coast.  There were also patchworks of squares in pink, white and blue.  It took me a while to realize that used to be homes.  The walls and roof all swept out to sea.  All that was left was the tiled floor.

Today, there are rows and rows of newly built houses. Their bright red and blue roofs shine in the sun. From the plane, you can see they are positioned a fair distance from the beach, on the slopes of the nearby hills. 

When we arrived, the airport was in chaos. We were the first flight to land after the tsunami. People were trying desperately to leave Aceh.  The only people coming in were journalists and aid workers.

The airport's control tower had been damaged in the earthquake. So, a makeshift tower had been erected.

Today, the Banda Aceh International Airport is a bright, spic and span operation with a stand advertising Aceh's "first boutique hotel", The Pade. The brochure shows a picture of white hotel with graceful arches and an inviting pool that overlooks Aceh's lush hills.

They advertise "happy hour" and a tour agency that offers "tsunami tours"

Boutique hotel, indeed.

By complete coincidence, one of the first people we meet coming out of the airport is Faisal, one of the drivers we had flagged down when we first arrived after the tsunami.

We were so desperate to get into town, we just grabbed the first cars we could find, a sputtering space van and a battered flat-bed truck owned by Faisal and his brother.  Faisal became our driver for the rest of our coverage.

He still looks the same. Grinning from ear to ear and a fast-talking motormouth, still negotiating the price of his car.  He's moved house closer to the airport but says work as a driver is drying up now that aid workers are leaving.

About 15 minutes into our drive, Faisal's car starts filling up with smoke and we have to pull over.  Nothing some pliers can't fix, he says grinning.

Some things don't change.

I'm on my way to Aceh. The first time I've been back since 2005 in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami.

Two women stand alone on a beach in a region of Banda Aceh devastated by the tsunami.

I'm actually really looking forward to going back and seeing how much has changed. Has Aceh realized its dream of "building back better"? Did those devastated villages, swept out to sea, ever rebuild? What happened to the orphaned children and fractured families? Will they ever be able to recover from that emotional loss?

The world responded to Aceh's plight with an outpouring of generosity. Money and aid - some $7 billion - was rushed to Aceh. How effectively was it managed? And what have we learned in the process?

But this is also a very personal visit for me. The devastation of the tsunami was so complete, so horrific, I have never seen anything like it and I hope the world never sees anything like it again.

And yet, I remeber also being inexplicably hopeful, as we clambered over the wreckage of destroyed homes. We cried often. Every person we spoke to had lost family. It was not uncommon to speak to a child who was the sole survivor in his or her family.

But there was also a gritty determination underneath the grief. It was not enough to survive. People in Aceh seemed determined to show that they would not just recover, but manage to thrive in the aftermath.

I remember a music school teacher who was determined to get a piano for the few students that survived. And a village chief that had drawn up plans to rebuild his village days before aid workers had reached him.

But it was always the children that seemed the most resilient. At one camp, I remember kids drawing pictures of the wall of water that took so many of their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. But then they would turn and smile and tell you how they planned to become teachers and doctors as if nothing could really stop them.

I'm looking forward to seeing if those dreams have been realized.

TOKYO, Japan - U.S. President Barack Obama landed in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday in his first stop of his Asian tour. The White House press corps jumped into action, watching the president’s every move. Not in person, mind you, but on TV monitors.

CNN’s Ed Henry and Dan Lothian report on U.S. President Barack Obama’s arrival in Japan.

Due to security and agreed-upon pool arrangements, one camera shoots the landing and a pool reporter informs the rest of the White House reporters. It’s an unusual sensation sitting next to fellow correspondents watching pool TV and then reporting what they’ve seen on their TV channels.

I’m sitting next to CNN White House correspondents Ed Henry and Dan Lothian. They do this every day, following the president’s every move, his every word. How they report the news has the potential to affect governments around the world and the citizens of those governments. 

The White House pool is a smooth system - there’s barely been a hiccup today. There won’t be very much face-to-face time with either President Obama or Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, but there will be electronic eyes tracking every move.

HONG KONG, China – My recent interview with Aki Ra, a Cambodian dedicated to landmine removal after being forced as a child by Khmer Rouge to plant mines, reminded me of my own close brush with unexploded ordnance.

A Cambodian woman walks past a landmine awareness sign near the Thai border in July 2007.

I was on a reporting assignment in former Khmer Rouge turf in northern Cambodia.

After hours riding on a bumpy road, nature called. We were in an area that had just reportedly been cleared of landmines and the government was resettling military families there.

Some villagers came out to greet us. We asked for a bathroom but there was none. Instead, they pointed to a path that still had a sign warning about the presence of landmines. You can never be sure if the mines are all gone, they said, so just stay on the path and find a spot along the way.

There were no trees and I juggled modesty with safety as I hesitatingly inched down the path. I turned back a few times and saw the dozen or so villagers standing on the road, watching my progress.

I finally got my business done and briskly returned along the path to our car.

But I have never forgotten that moment. It made me think of the risks that Cambodians, and others living in such heavily-mined countries - Iraq, Colombia, Afghanistan - take everyday to go about their daily lives: Tilling a field to cultivate crops, walking to school, rounding up the family's livestock or even finding a spot for a community outhouse.

As a reporter for an international news agency in the country for more than two years, I encountered many Cambodians - old and young - whose futures in one of the world's poorest countries were literally hobbled by these weapons of war.

They all made do with their challenging situations in a country where physical fitness is part of daily survival, since many Cambodians are doing some type of farming or fishing to put food on the table.

Meeting Aki Ra, who has now started his own non-profit group to rid the country of mines, reminded me how much this sad legacy of decades of conflict will continue to linger on for Cambodians until the last mine is cleared. Read the article on Aki Ra

TOKYO, Japan — Shoichi Nakagawa burst onto the global stage in an embarrassing, and memorable way. He appeared to be drunk at the G7 news conference in Rome, Italy, falling asleep as reporters questioned the world leaders. He apologized for his behavior, but denied it was the result of heavy drinking.

A man delivers flowers to Nakagawa’s home.

But that behavior led to his resignation as finance minister and multiple jokes told through Japan, including a downloadable mobile phone game where players win by keeping the apparently drunk finance minister awake.

That may have been a shocking event to world viewers, but in Japan, what followed in the election was far more stunning. Nakagawa lost in the August 30 general election, marking the collapse of what had been dubbed the “Nakagawa Kingdom.” That name came from the strong electoral power base built by his father. Supporters cried in Nakagawa’s arms on election night and pledged to fight in the next election. Nakagawa appeared calm and respectful.

But privately, former Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura surmised the loss was far more shocking. Kawamura, to reporters in Tokyo, said Nakagawa may have been both physically and mentally exhausted due to the shock of losing in the election.

Police have no ruling yet on the cause of Nakagawa’s death. But at age 56, he is one year younger than his father was when he died. Nakagawa himself entered politics after his father’s death, which was ruled a suicide.

As word spread through Tokyo, old political friends lined up outside Nakagawa’s home to mark the sad passing. To them, Nakagawa still had a future with domestic politics, but both that and his life were cut short before their time.

SOLANA MUNICIPALITY, Philippines — The villagers in the northern Philippines have lived with typhoons their whole lives, but many of them told me they weren't prepared for a storm the size of Typhoon Parma.

A farmer crosses a flooded rice paddy on the outskirts of Manila.

I am in a village in Solana, a municipality of Cagayan Province, where Parma made landfall.

We have been driving through some of the low-lying areas. On our way here, we passed downed power lines and tree branches strewn on the roads. Military personnel and local volunteers are working overtime to clear the debris. While we were filming some of the damage, a farmer walked over to tell me that the flooding got so severe that the waters rose as high as his head.

The village I am in now is a community of farmers.  Some of the rooftops on the homes here were blown off by the winds. The power was knocked out. One man told me he was terrified when the storm set in because he could hear his house rattling and the rains pelting his metal roof. The waters on some of the roads come up to our knees.

The villagers told me flooding is normal during typhoon season so many of them build a second floor on their homes. One family of rice farmers was kind enough to show me around their house. All their belongings were elevated, piled on tables, cabinets and shelves. The water was about a foot deep. This is the first time, the family told me, that the water flowed into the house. The ceiling is stained with water marks, Parma's permanent imprint on their home.

The family's home has a second floor but it failed to provide the usual shelter to the storm. The sound of Parma was so frightening, they said, that the six family members chose to huddle on small beds on the ground floor despite the rising waters. They feared the severe winds would blow off their roof, leaving them exposed to Parma's fury. They didn't have time to evacuate.

The winds and rains are gone now as Parma heads away from here. The farmers say the waters will likely take about a week to recede, and they worry about the damage to their crops. The rice plants are likely destroyed, Pinky Rhose Jesalva, a university student told me. Her family owns a tract of land nearby.

Other farmer families have laid out corn kernels alongside the road in hopes that the fermenting seeds will dry out. The Agricultural Department estimates the cost of damage from the two typhoons, Parma and Ketsana, will amount to about 120 million U.S. dollars, mainly because of devastated rice crops.

But the farmers have not given up hope. They are walking on the corn, turning the kernels over with their bare feet, in the hopes of salvaging more of their harvests.

PADANG, Indonesia - The last 48 hours have been bewildering. A series of natural disasters across the Asia Pacific has left us scrambling to cover diverse disasters.

CNN's cameraman Mark Phillips, producer Andy Saputra and survivor John Lee chat in a hospital.

First Tropical Storm Ketsana left Manila 80 percent underwater. So we did our best to get there as soon as possible. But almost no sooner had we arrived than an earthquake and tsunami hit the remote Pacific islands of Samoa and American Samoa.

Frantic calls to various travel agents followed. “How do we get there? Via Seoul?? 35 hours???! You’ve got to be kidding.”

As we were making plans, Ketsana smashed into Vietnam. As other CNN crews were dispatched from Indonesia to Vietnam, suddenly news of another huge earthquake in Sumatra.

It meant we had a logistical nightmare to get to all of our equipment across the other side of the region in double quick time.

A flight through Singapore, Jakarta (endless delayed flights) and finally Padang got us to the heart of the latest crisis.

As our plane glided in over the city I could see the ribbons of light along the roads, but in between, there was dark emptiness. The entire city was blacked-out. Only a few buildings had backup generators. It made live television broadcasts very, very tricky. We had our own portable generator but could bring gasoline on a plane, and now the queue for fuel was two to three hours at the local gas station.

We managed to get a few live shots in the bag before finally our batteries died. Then like the residents of Padang, we too were feeling our way through the night. We found a half-built hotel, which had been slightly damaged. The owner was reluctant to let us stay inside because of the risk of aftershocks, ¬so we instead caught a couple of hours sleep in his bus in the parking lot.

Daylight enabled us to get a much better view of the damage. It’s bizarrely random, as it always seems to be in earthquakes. Some buildings are standing intact, others folded in on themselves.

There is one incident that will stick in my mind forever. It was the incredible story of John Lee. The 55-year-old Singaporean coal trader had been in Padang on business when suddenly his meeting was plunged into darkness, as the quake ”exploded” around him, and before he could react, the building collapsed.

CNN cameraman Mark Phillips spotted some Indonesian rescuers trying to free him, but it seemed like a hopeless effort. They were using a hammer and chisel to try and tunnel through tons of concrete, but Mark spent hours talking to John through the rubble and trying to reassure him that he’d be alright. Watch Phillips talk with Lee, as he's trapped beneath rubble.

Mark left the scene to find out if there was more that could be done but then heard later that John had been freed from his prison of mangled wreckage. On a whim, at one in the morning, we decided to go up to the hospital to see if John was OK. And as we walked into the lobby, there he was, on a stretcher, conscious, awake and smiling.

Finally Mark got to see the man he’d presumed would surely die, and John put a face to the voice who’d given him hope when his situation seemed utterly hopeless.

Amid all this destruction, tragedy and chaos a story of survival and courage that made the last 48 hours seem thoroughly worthwhile.

MANILA, Philippines — It was the speed of the flooding that left so many shocked in Manila. Many knew that a tropical storm was on its way, but few were prepared for the sudden swirling water that rose up from drains, sewers and rivers choking the streets with brown, filthy water.

A boy wades through the waters in Marietta Romeo, a middle-class neighborhood in eastern Manila.

People say it came up so quickly before they realized what was happening - their cars were underwater, then the ground floor of their houses.

Many panicked and ran upstairs, but the water followed until they had no option but to climb onto the roof.

Some stayed there for days getting hungrier and thirstier.

A man sits among the debris left after floods rushed through Marietta Romeo.

This perhaps explains some of the anger that is gradually being directed at the government.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has been the focus for much of the criticism, but she has so far not held a news conference or given an interview.

Instead, she has issued statements and sound-bites, perhaps mindful of the awkward questions that would be asked about the apparent lack of government planning or preparedness.

Her anointed successor, Defense Minister Gilberto Teodoro, has been the face of the government during this disaster, and the government is now scrambling to show it is on top of the aftermath.

The Presidential Palace was partially opened to allow volunteers to pack supplies for affected areas and some food was handed out to those lucky enough to hear about the aid distribution.

But by the time we arrived, hundreds were waiting outside with a growing sense of disappointment, as they realized they had gotten there too late. In reality, the use of a couple of rooms in the museum of the Presidential Palace was nothing more than an attempt to give local TV stations something to film.

With some 2 million people affected by the flooding, it will take more than biscuits and potato chips to get a grip on the storm and flood aftermath.

International Aid agencies are now here in force, concentrating on water and health issues. Power is still out in many neighborhoods, adding to the misery. Throw into this chaotic mix another stack of tropical storms lurking menacingly out in the Pacific – and this might not be over just yet.