Nicolina recounts; "We have a house just on a hill so we overlook two bays. It was all really surreal. We were all having breakfast and we all thought there's a huge pipe that burst or something. And (when we) looked at the ocean, it went from a beautiful blue to a murky brown sludge. And we just see it coming down the coast.

And then suddenly, my sister turned to me and said, 'Look the tide is in different directions. Instead of coming back and forth towards us, it was going left and right'. We saw the whole beach get wiped out. It took everything with them. All the deck chairs, all the mud huts, everything and we just stood there in shock.

"The management of our house called us and said don't leave our house, an earthquake have just hit and all my staff said, we had to go, we had to go and everyone left.

"Everybody just started panicking. There's absolute mass panic everywhere. It was just terrible. Everybody was jumping into cars and bikes and just blaring theri horns and screaming and driving as fast as they could away from city.

After the initial panic, many around the area came in search for shelter she said,
"A lot of people are still in shock. Our house next door to where we are now, it is now 40 people there. It is a house which usually holds 8. We have friends who are from Phi Phi Island, who managed to get back to mainland, but they have lost everything, absolutely everything. Theyve got no passport, no nothing. We have been coming to Phuket for 15 years and we have never experienced anything like this.

Nicola says it seemed like the Thais, at least, were trying to get back on their feet as quickly as possible, "We had booked a boat trip for this morning. And the guy actually called this morning, so you still want to go? And I was in shock going NO! I said didn't you watch the news but he said, Yeah, Yeah, everything is going to be fine today. We still do business. So the Thais are trying to keep it together and trying to get business as quickly back into order as if nothing has happened but the tourist are more in shock."