PHUKET, Thailand, Jan. 2 -- On Saturday, a week after massive waves devastated this normally boisterous tourist resort, Buddhist monks in orange robes performed a temple ritual for the dead. Water was poured on the ground. Offerings of food were accepted by monks from local Thais who flocked to the temples. And the bodies of Thai victims were set alight on funeral pyres.

In Thai culture, healing after a tragedy comes from giving. Thais believe that giving food to monks at temples is a way to pass food on to the dead. The water that is poured on the ground during the ceremonies is thought to quench the thirst of the departed.

For the monks, the ceremony was one of honoring the dead, accompanied by prayers to free them from earth's bonds so they might enter heaven. But for many Thais, who balance Buddhist belief with traditional superstition, the ritual carried an even more important meaning: The lost spirits of the dead still lurk here, they said, desperate, lonely and confused, and the ceremony can help them find their way out.

At the Wat Lampetch temple, where cremations have been carried out daily since the tragedy, monks said that a belief in spirits roaming the scene of death is one way Thais deal with grief over the loss of loved ones, although the monks dismissed the notion as superstitious.

"It's because the family thinks about the person who has passed away," said Choosak Chumchob, a senior monk who came here from Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand, to assist with the ceremonies. "They dream. Or perhaps they think they still see, or even smell, the person."

But some Thais are sure Phuket is full of ghosts seeking to move on, but unable to. "Some might go to heaven, some might go to hell," said Noi, a 25-year-old hostess at the Wandee Bar, an outdoor drinking spot just a few yards from the beach where thousands perished. "But the desperate ones are still wandering around. They might get lonely. They can't contact anybody. They don't know what's going on." Noi declined to give her last name.

The Wandee reopened Saturday, after the owner replaced tables and bar stools washed away by the violent tide. Women who work there are again standing outside, beckoning passing tourists to come in for a drink. But now, they said, they ask each other, 'Is that a real person, or a ghost?' And they go home early because, they explained, the spirits mostly stir around midnight.

Thai authorities have confirmed nearly 5,000 deaths in the country -- about half of them foreigners, mostly European vacationers here for the Christmas and New Year holidays. Almost 4,000 others are listed as missing, although Thailand's prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, said most of the missing were probably dead. On Sunday, another 600 corpses were recovered from the devastated Phi Phi resort island.

Thailand's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej has told Thais to overcome this disaster -- the worst in modern Thai history -- by giving generously. In his New Year's message, the king called the tragedy one of the bad events in life's cycle. "It is impossible that in life one would only come across happiness," he said. "Hardships and dangers always come together, and that's unavoidable."

Some Thais have speculated that the devastation in Phuket was a consequence of violence in the country's largely Muslim far south, and that somehow Thailand was being punished.

Choosak, the monk, dismissed that view. "This was a natural disaster, not man-made," he said. "I don't believe we're cursed -- I'm not going to believe that." He reasoned that if the tsunami disaster had been linked to the violence in the south, destruction would have been visited on the three provinces where the fighting is taking place, not Phuket and the tourist areas, which are farther north.

Instead of searching for causes and believing in spirits, he and the other monks said they were encouraging people to meditate, pray and do their best to get their lives back to normal.

There are signs that Phuket is beginning to shake off the tragedy. Just a few blocks from the ravaged beachfront -- where a two-mile stretch of bars, hotels, massage parlors, tourist shops and a shopping arcade lay in ruins -- the open-air bars and nightclubs have reopened, with disco music blaring and women dancing on tabletops.

Sgt. Maj. Wunchai Boongerd, a Thai police officer sent from a province farther south to help prevent looting along the beachfront road, said Phuket's Thai victims were made up of two groups -- the owners of the large hotels and resorts, who will get insurance money to rebuild, and the small people -- the vendors and others whose livelihoods depended on tourism.

"One group is going on for the business," he said. "And the other group just wants to survive."