In Thailand, police are ordering foreign families looking for missing relatives to stay away from recovery areas to make way for forensic experts trying to identify corpses.

More than 5,000 bodies have been recovered in Thailand and it's believed half of the country's victims were foreigners.

Some countries are beginning to publicly say that their missing are likely dead, but Prime Minister Paul Martin said Monday he wasn't prepared to "close that door yet."

"I still think that there's hope," Martin said. "If you take a look at earlier events, earthquakes, weeks later people are found alive."

Thailand hasn't yet declared all of its missing dead, but as the days go on, the hope of finding any survivors becomes increasingly unlikely.

"Certainly, each day that passes, it becomes more obvious that likely the people are missing and that they have died,'' Ontario's commissioner of emergency management, Dr. James Young said from Phuket, Thailand.

Six Canadians have been confirmed dead and at least 150 others are missing or unaccounted for, according to Foreign Affairs, most of them in Thailand.

Four Canadian survivors in Thailand are trying to put their lives back together. Though they don't know each other, they'll forever share the fact that they each survived the tsunami.

Phil Akanasieve and his girlfriend were at the Tropika resort on Patong beach when the tsunami hit. When the Winnipeg native comes back to retrace his steps, he finds not much has changed since the waters receded.

With so many buildings destroyed, Akanasieve is haunted about what happened to other guests and resort staff.

"I don't know what their ultimate fate would have been, because if they didn't run, they would have had problems," he said. "It came up these steps and pushed the doors and had enough to pressure the door and swamp us immediately."

According to Windsor native Shannon Bunna, luck played a role in her plans the day the tsunami struck. Bunna was supposed to be at the beach with her two children, but she ended up staying at the cafe she owns.

"So many said the same thing, that they had plans to do this, and then they just didn't, or they just happened to be away from their house that's now gone," she said. "I don't believe in those things, but it doesn't seem like mere coincidence."

Adrienne Foley, a Canadian English teacher, volunteered in a Thai morgue after the disaster. Her task was to transport the recovered bodies. But recently, the job became too much.

"When I had to give up, that was the worst moment for me," she said. "I couldn't continue. That was really hard, not being strong enough to carry on doing what I was doing. That and seeing a child. A two-year-old child in a coffin."

Toronto native Peter McGillvray left Canada to live out his dream in the place he loves. Thailand was supposed to be paradise, but that paradise is now lost.

"You're either going to hospital or you're checking on friends or you're downtown at city hall, you're doing so much but you have to take a break and regroup," he says. "Two days later, I'm on the boat and a corpse floats by."

But through the tragedy, McGillvray's ex-pat community has come together. They're all pitching in to rebuild their favourite bar.

"You get people coming together, helping other people. It's the spirit of good will and it really shows you what the power of the people can do."

Indeed, many survivors in Thailand say it will be acts of kindness that will heal their country.

International teams have brought emotional counsellors with them to help comfort families of those looking for the missing. The Thai government has also set up booths where volunteers listen to survivors' stories and help families grieve.

With files from CTV's Steve Chao in Thailand