1st January 2005, Koh Tao, Thailand
It's New Year's Day. We are in Koh Tau in the Gulf of Thailand. Our friends from home, Pete and Sally have been with us since Christmas Eve. They are here on a two week holiday. We met up with my sister and her boyfriend, Dani and Zak as soon as we got to Bangkok. They have just started a three month trip of SE Asia. We all spent Christmas together which was really nice.

Right now, my boyfriend Tim is in bed after taking our stash of emergency antibiotics and is feeling really bad. Pete and Sally have popped up to the town. Sally is a bit 'tired and emotional' and as a result Pete is driving the poor girl mad.

Dani and Zak have gone to Malaysia. I have been up half the night wondering if I would ever be able to get off the toilet and get back into bed. I'm feeling a bit better now. Damned white Russian from last night. I think it might have been the ice.

Doesn't sound like a great start to the new year, but we are grateful. Very grateful.

Tore, the guy, who is staying in the bungalow next-door got back from Koh Phi Phi yesterday. He arrived with his best friend....a Norwegian girl called Celia and her boyfriend, Chris.

I was just making my way back to my spot on the beach after a swim when I overheard the conversation - a girl on the phone,

"I dunno, some earthquake or something, they're saying Kho Phi Phi is trashed."

My thoughts turned instantly to my sister Dani and her boyfriend, Zak - they'd left us on the beach an hour earlier to board a ferry heading for Crabbi.

I approached the girl on the phone and asked what was going on. By this time people had started to gather in groups on the beach.

A small earthquake is what people were generally saying. Most agreed that 150 people were involved, but stories varied as to whether they were dead or injured - most said injured.

I decided to check at the beach bar - the owners have the television on non-stop - maybe there'll be something on the news.

"Yes, Earthquake, Ko Phi Phi " said the owner's wife looking totally disinterested as she turned away from me and carried on watching TV. "Don't worry", said her husband on his way out of the kitchen, "only small, Ko Phi Phi, not here, not so much problem, no-one dead."

Small earthquake or not, I needed to get in touch with Dani and stop her getting on that boat. I'd left my phone at our beach hut a few miles away. Our friend Pete had his, but we couldn't get a signal. In the end Tim took one of the mopeds we'd hired and drove until he managed to get the phone to work.

He came back about 45 mins later, smiling saying he'd spoken to Dani - they'd been told that there was a small earthquake and no boats were leaving the island.

I breathed a sigh of relief. We were due to join them the next day to spend a few days in Crabbi and then on to Ko Phi Phi. Obviously those plans are scrapped now.

We eventually headed back to our beach huts to meet Dani and Zak and get ready for the Full Moon party that night. That's when I checked my phone :

22 missed calls and 9 text messages - not just from my mum, but from mates I hadn't heard from in ages. Something was seriously wrong.

On the TV at our beach huts, the news continued to say there had been a small earthquake - or at least that's what the owner was telling us.

Those horrific pictures that I now know everybody out of Thailand was watching -..they were nowhere. Looking back, it seems like on that first day the Thai government was trying to cover it up.

While all this was going on our side, the guy we spent New Year with, Tore had woken up to shouting and screaming outside his bungalow. From where he was ...up a steep hill....he looked out to a scene of people running and screaming covered in blood. He had no idea where his friends were. He decided all he could do was wait for them.

His friend, Chris was wading through a metre of sea water, debris, dead bodies and screaming people while desperately trying to get back to his bungalow on the beach to find out whether his girlfriend, Celia, was still alive.

On the way, glass that had smashed from windows had severed two tendons in his foot.

Celia was clinging to a ceiling fan. She'd been outside having a cigarette when she saw the commotion and, not knowing what to do, locked herself inside her hut.

Her bungalow had filled almost to the top with water leaving her head space only to breathe and ponder whether it would keep rising leading to a certain, slow death.

They both seemed amazingly calm when they arrived, but that has got to be a head *uck of the most violent kind. I am certain it has not hit them yet.

The earthquake was one of the worst in 90 years. It measured 9.0 on the Richter Scale. The epi-centre was in the Andaman Sea, just off Indonesia. According to news reports the Tsunami was 30 feet high and travelled at 500km an hour. It took two hours to hit and virtually wipe out Phuket, Koh Phi-Phi and Krabbi.

Sri Lanka, The Maldives, western Malasia, Southern India and even Somalia in Africa were all hit. The last I heard the death toll stood at 120,000 with still thousands unaccounted for. Tore said he saw bodies lined up on the beach. Disease is adding to the casualties.

It's a disaster of an unimaginable scale and it makes me go cold thinking of how many people have died.

If Tim had not insisted on us all meeting up in Ko Pha Ngan for the full moon party we would have been either on Krabbi or Ko Phi-Phi. It doesn't bear thinking about.

We were surprised that the party went ahead at all, but then all the news was coming to us via friends and family. The people on Ko Phangan seemed to know nothing.

The party was horrid. There was no spiritual
vibe at all...just drunk people trashing the beach and islanders cashing in on it by selling mushroomless tea and shakes at extortionate prices and all sorts of nasty stuff passing for whisky or vodka.

There were people fighting and throwing glass bottles in the water. I found myself thankful for
it though because every month, people, including loads of Thais, leave from all over Thailand to come to them. On Christmas Eve, boatload after boatload
were arriving from Koh Tau, Koh Phi Phi and Phuket. It saved a lot of lives in Thailand this time round.

It poured down with rain for the whole of the night- and as much as I kept telling myself that this drunken, spiritless, cash motivated mess had saved countless lives . I could totally see why Dani and Zak were so set on not going.

Yesterday I sent off the last of the 'we're ok' emails and finished them off with 'time to celebrate life'. I was thinking of all the survivors at the time, but I found that very hard to do last night.

While the fireworks were sounding and the Chinese lanterns were floating all over the sky, Celia and Chris were in the tightest embrace ever - how relieved they must be to be seeing in 2005, but I can't stop thinking about all the horror stories - the newly married couple whose 8 month old baby was swept out of the father's arms. Another Dad with two kids, one of three and one of five. He managed to keep hold of the five year old apparently. That was just two of the stories I heard about. There are at least a further 120,000 that I don't know about.

Dani and Zak are stuck in Kuala Lumpur. They were supposed to be going south but there are Monsoons on the coast. I am worried about them.

Mum and Dad are up in arms. I got an email from my sister, Nell begging us to come home. I felt really bad, but I told her in no uncertain terms that we would not even consider it. I think I have managed to convince Mum that we are out of danger. Hopefully she has calmed down and is worrying less.

Last night though, amid the New Year's celebrations I found myself checking that the tide was still lapping on the shore.

Back in Bangkok we tried to find out if there was anything we could do to help. Loads of people were heading over there, only to be turned away. I speak three languages, so I thought that might be useful, but they were only interested in people with building or medical skills.

I feel sad, happy, guilty, relieved, helpless all at once. The morbid thoughts will not go away - which one of us would have died? Would mum and dad have lost both daughters? Would we all have died? What would life be like without Tim? What would we have done - run towards or away from the wave?

Thank you, God, fate, universe, random choice - whatever it was that made us opt for that shitty party on Ko Phangan.

My heart and all my love goes to any person reading this who lost someone. I hope your heart is healing.