Your experience on tsunami
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It flattened walls, trees, and the buildings around us, before rising higher and higher. We tried to get people out. Miraculously, guests who had been in the room underneath us started popping up from the water.
One woman was trapped in her locked room because she couldn't find her key. She said the room filled up quickly with water and she took what she thought would be her last breath. Luckily she found the key and opened the door which then burst into pieces under the pressure.
Buildings were collapsing around us. We tried to pull out passing people trapped in the currents.
When the water finally subsided we made a run for higher ground and a temple that had become a make-shift safe refugee area. We set up camp in a hotel up on a hill and when it was safe to do so, we went back down to salvage anything we could. I remember seeing rooms full of mud and fish.
People came up to the temple with dead bodies. We carried one Italian woman with a suspected broken back through the debris to another hotel to get medical help. I met one guy who had been out surfing and was swept a few miles up the coast. He had to walk through all the death and destruction to find his family. Luckily he found them all.
One of the only positives to come out of it all was the humanity of it. It didn't matter about your nationality or religion. Everyone was checking on each other.
A few days later, once the road was clear, the High Commission sent coaches to take us back to a refugee centre in Colombo. We were fed, watered, offered clothes and flights home but we chose not go straight away. We wanted to stay to try and comprehend the reality of what had happened.
The main thing we felt was guilt. After seeing the devastation, we were lucky enough leave, but many were left with nothing.