Hi I am Chris I am 34 years old and I live in London. On December 26th 2004 I was in Thailand where I saw the tsunami.
I was feeling decidedly ropey after the previous night's misadventures and I lay down and I was just relaxing hearing the sound of the sea and all of a sudden it changed. It changed to the sound of a tap running, like a river almost. And I looked out and about a kilometre to about a mile out I could see a set of three enormous waves brewing.
The first wave came in and absolutely thundered in and I just couldn't believe what I was seeing, it was just chaos, and then the second one came and ripped the restaurant off the side of the mountain.
All you could hear was glass and screaming, the incessant roar of the sea being in its most violent angry mood that you would have ever, ever seen. And the water was just rising so fast it was probably rising a foot or two feet every ten seconds.
At this stage I really, really feared for my life. All I had on was just a pair of swimming trunks and my arm was in a plaster I didn't, I didn't have my sling for it. If I had been dragged into the water I simply - even though I am a good swimmer I simply would not have been able to withstand the currents and basically get myself to safety.
The four of us on our porch - they helped me more to be perfectly honest - they helped me and we helped pushed each other up, up this hill to get to what we deemed to be safety or at least relative safety. It was probably two or three hours later that we heard the first news that Sumatra had been really badly hit by it.
Thailand and Sri Lanka had been hit by this and India's been hit by it.
By this stage the death toll was up to one hundred and eighty or two hundred thousand or whatever it was and it was at that time when we began to realise that we had really seen what was obviously a global event of staggering proportions.
I really wanted to see my mum and my dad especially given what had happened, I just wanted to come home on the first night I got back to work and we went to the local pub. And I told three or four people what had happened and I remember breaking down into floods of tears about it.
I was dreaming about it almost every night I remember on numerous occasions being at work and just staring at my computer screen and reliving the moment once, reliving it again, reliving it again, reliving it again, dreaming about it that night and wake up. Think about, think about, think about it.
It was oppressive, I basically got myself signed off work for a month because I couldn't think about or concentrate on anything else. I really did need to think about and concentrate on me getting myself better and I was treated for post traumatic stress disorder. Professional help was very good and it basically put me on the road to recovery.
You know it was a tough time and now I am out the other side.
It's something that lives with me forever.
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