One Singaporean couple went to Penang for their 10th wedding anniversary but the celebrations were marred by their first encounter with killer waves. Johnson Choo with the story.
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Kamaria Kassim was on Batu Ferringhi Beach on December 26 with her husband and relatives when they saw a long stretch of foam heading towards the beach.

That was when the boat and jetski operators quickly got everyone out of the water.

"I saw the first wave when it came and it wasn't so serious. So we waited for the second wave and suddenly people shouted, 'Run! Run! Run!'" said Ms Kamaria.

A mad scramble ensued as everyone tried to flee from the four-metre high waves.

Fearing for their lives, Ms Kamaria and her husband fled the scene immediately after the second wave, making their way back to mainland Malaysia via the Penang Bridge.

"When we drive, we saw a lot of people by the roadside. The houses were damaged with water inside," she said.

Akiko Tada, a Japanese working in Singapore for the past five years, has had close encounters with earthquakes in Japan; but Sunday's tsunami was her first experience with the killer waves.

She was scuba diving just off the coast of Aceh, Indonesia when she was caught in the tsunami.

Ms Tada said, "We heard a very disturbing big noise which lasted for a while, and we thought that was a big boat passing by above us. As long as we're diving or staying underwater or boat, you don't feel anything; it was just normal. But it was really quite an experience because you can see the tide that's three to five metres difference."

When the tsunami subsided, she and her friends managed to get a fishing boat to ferry them to Aceh.

"When we got closer to Aceh, we saw a lot of floating dead bodies, and finally when we got to the shore, everything around the port was just smashed and covered with mud and dead people lying everywhere," she said.

Ms Tada and her friends managed to catch a connecting flight back to Singapore that very same night.