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The day we almost died. My wife Arlette and I decided to return this Christmas vacation to Kho Lak in Thailand, because we had a wonderful time there last year. Kho Lak has a beautiful 10 km beach. Between the beach and the road (about 200 meter) lies a string of resort hotels, mostly wooden bungalows that are nicely situated in lush vegetation. The first 2 hotels, one of them ours, are situated on a slope, because the road descends from some higher ground to beach level. We were woken up at 8 a.m. because our bungalow was trembling. I cursed those damn construction workers for starting so early, without consideration for us jet-lagging tourists. Then I thought that maybe my Swedish neighbour was having ferocious sex, and I thought maybe it was time for me to start Viagra in order to keep up with guys like him. We fell asleep again, and woke up again at 10. We decided to make a run to breakfast, which was served until 10.30. The restaurant was outside on a terrace, overlooking the pool and beyond that the beach and the Andeman Sea, After we sat down I noticed that the waiters were all staring and pointing at the sea. I stood up to see what they were looking at, and saw that the seawater was receding rapidly. It was a fascinating sight, and many people got their cameras out and walked toward the dry seabed and onto it. They started looking for shells and other things, were jogging out there and throwing balls etc. The beach itself was full of sunbathing tourists. I had an uncomfortable feeling about all this. I lived 2 years on the beach in California, and have never seen a sea behave like this, so far outside the parameters of tidal fluctuations. Then all of a sudden the penny dropped. The earlier trembling was an earthquake. The receding water (300 meter, all the way to the reef by now) was the prelude to a tidal wave! I grabbed my wife's hand and screamed that we had to run. She was reluctant, because the waiter just put down a specially for us prepared vegetarian Thai Curry and she did not want to hurt his feelings.. At that same moment I saw a 10 meter high wall of water come crashing over the reef towards us at a speed of 40-50 mph. The sound was bloodcurdling. We ran to the road that went uphill to the hotel lobby, which was located near the higher road. We were followed by about 10 other restaurant guests. Halfway up the hill I dared to look behind me, and saw below us at the beach and the pool area a boiling mass of water, where only a minute before had been sunbathing tourists. In it were palm trees, beach chairs and parts of bungalows twirling around, as well as people that were franticly trying to hold on to something. We kept running till we reached the deck at the reception, from were we had a good view of this inferno. We saw that another wave was coming in, and decided to keep going for higher ground. We crossed the road and started to climb the steep hill into the jungle beyond it, not feeling safe until we gained another 50 meter in altitude. There we waited out the onslaught, knowing that only few people would have survived the onslaught down there. When the sea looked calm again we descended to the hotel reception at the road, and found a score of severely wounded people. No need to go into details, you have all seen the TV pictures I assume.. We helped to get them onto the back of pick-up trucks that would drive them to the hospital, not knowing however if the road was OK. Then we were warned of another tsunami on the way, so we climbed up into the jungle again, with 2 German women and an 8 year old Austrian girl. Her father could not join us. He had swallowed so much water that after 2 steps he was exhausted, so him too we sent to the hospital. Her mother was missing. We waited 2 more hours up there, and saw the wave come and recede. It was not as big as the morning ones. We then came down to the road, where cars and flatbed trucks loaded with wounded were driving by non-stop. I did not want to go down to the lower level and see all the corpses that littered the beach. Lucky for us that our room was high enough to have been spared, so we went to get our luggage and were driven that evening to a police post, located on the highest part of the road. There was no electricity, no cell-phone network nor radio, so we spent the night at a small restaurant, where the Thai woman who ran it took great care of the 50 or so stranded tourist who spent the night there. She fed us and gave us water, and put down blankets to sleep on. We were the luckiest people there. Most people were missing friends or family members and had no possessions other than the beach clothes they were wearing. The woman in the restaurant, which belonged to her aunt, told us a wry story. She owned a fruit stall on the beach and received a phone call from her uncle, a police officer on Phuket Island, that a tsunami was coming. She ran to the beach to warn people, but they shrugged her off. Then she called the hotels, and they too refused to believe her. She climbed the stairs up to the road and safety, but lost her whole business in the waves. The next day the road was clear, and we could start the long trip back home (The Hague, Holland). We met many people on the way back, and heard mostly very sad stories of decimated families and lost friends. The Thai people without exception were wonderful. Despite their own sorrow and losses they did all they could to help us. We are deeply moved by their attitude, and will go back to Thailand soon. We found out that the little Austrian girl's mother had also survived, when we called her grandmother in Austria.