Emergency relief is still being distributed, with the World Food Programme feeding nearly two million people in the region.

"I've been moving from camp to camp. I want to go back home," said Zam Zami Amin, 48, who lost his wife and two of his four children when giant earthquake-triggered waves destroyed his village of Deyah Raya in Indonesia's Aceh province.

"I'm still confused. That's why I don't feel like there have been any changes."

For victims, the memories of that fateful Sunday morning on Dec. 26 are vivid. Many have nightmares. In Aceh, where 168,000 people are dead or missing, bodies are still being found. Parts of its coast look like the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.

In southern Thailand, where many foreigners were among the 5,395 people who died, small wreath-laying ceremonies were held on Sunday at a memorial on the tourist-island of Phuket.

Gabor Szigeti, a 32-year-old Swedish survivor, returned to Khao Lak, a stretch of white beaches north of Phuket, where he saw so many others lose loved ones that day.

Szigeti and his wife survived when the monster waves smashed into his holiday bungalow. The couple returned to thank local Thais who helped them survive the ordeal, he said.

"This helped us to get closure, I'd say. I feel a lot calmer," he said.

"MIND-BOGGLING COMPLEX"

The 9.15 magnitude earthquake that erupted off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island, the strongest in 40 years, sent walls of water as high as 10 metres (33 ft) barrelling into 13 Indian Ocean nations.

No place suffered more than Aceh. As many as 1,000 villages and towns were either damaged or wiped off the map. Little rebuilding has started and a massive clean-up is still going on.

Indeed, it will take as long as 10 years to rebuild what was destroyed, the United Nations said last week.

In Aceh, donors say rebuilding is up to two months behind what it should be because of delays in setting up an agency to oversee reconstruction. It began approving projects in early May, and said on Saturday $2.8 billion was ready to be spent.

Donors insist one of the biggest peacetime reconstruction efforts in history must balance speed with quality, as land titles are sorted out and communities decide what they want.

"It's mind-boggling complex. But by October or November you will get a sense of wow, this place is humming," said Andrew Steer, head of the World Bank in Jakarta, referring to Aceh.

Nearly 120,000 homes need to be rebuilt in Aceh for the more than 500,000 who lost houses.

A large majority of those people will be living in semi-permanent or permanent houses in two years, the United Nations said on Saturday.

Sri Lanka is building more than 90,000 homes for its half-million displaced people.

Aid pledges by governments and multilateral organisations total around $6.9 billion, while private donations total nearly $5 billion, according to Reuters research. But the bulk of that money has yet to be disbursed.

PROTECT THE POOR

International agency Oxfam said in a report on Saturday that poor communities were vulnerable, partly because the tsunami affected some of the poorest in each of the three worst-hit countries. Their fragile houses were washed away while the brick houses of richer people were more likely to withstand the force.

"Though the reconstruction effort in many cases is effectively helping poor people, in some cases there has been a tendency to focus on landowners, business people and the most high profile cases, rather than prioritise aid to poor communities," the report said.

The calamity took an appalling toll on women and children. More than a third of the dead in Indonesia were children and parents are still looking for offspring torn from their grasp when the monster waves rushed inland.

Nearly, 8,000 children lost one or both of their parents.

One of the hardest things for survivors is to make sense of what happened and deal with their loss.

Depression has surged in affected communities.

Nizarli, the sub-district chief in the destroyed town of Lhok Kruet on Aceh's west coast, lost his wife and two children. In his many moments of grief, he looks to Islam for solace in this devout part of Indonesia.

"We are Muslims. This was our destiny. We just thought it was the end of the world," said Nizarli.

But the disaster could also leave a legacy of peace -- and if the aid is properly deployed, upgrade infrastructure and leave better communities in the impoverished coastal regions of the tsunami zone.

Indonesia and separatist rebels in Aceh have resumed talks about settling a three-decade rebellion.

In Sri Lanka, a new pact to share $3.0 billion in pledged aid with Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels could help jump-start efforts to convert a three-year ceasefire into lasting peace after two decades of bloody civil war.

"One positive aspect is both the government and the LTTE have labelled it as the first step to recommencement of the peace process," said Kethesh Loganathan of public policy institute the Centre for Policy Alternatives.