Psychology professor Faye Linda Wachs and her husband Gene Kim were underwater off Koh Phi Phi island when the tidal wave roared through the ocean around them and struck the Thai coast, killing at least 2,400 people there.

When the buffeted couple surfaced and got back to the beach, the palm-fringed paradise they had left was an unrecognisable scene of death and destruction.

"As we came in, we realised how lucky we are because you could see bodies floating in the water," Wachs said after returning to her home in Los Angeles.

"It was terrible. The devastation was unbelievable. The island is essentially gone. We left paradise -- it was a beautiful island -- and we came back to just hell," the holiday-maker said.

At least 119,000 people in eight Asian countries are so far confirmed killed by the tsunami, which was spawned by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

The deadly tidal wave was the first in recorded history to have hit several countries at the same time.

Wachs, 34, and Kim said they were diving around a wrecked ship on Sunday morning when the water suddenly churned up around them, creating a "white wash" that sucked them downwards towards the seabed.

"I was being tossed around like I was inside a washing machine," said Wachs' husband, Kim, adding that he had thought he was headed for the surface, but his depth gauge indicated he was going downwards.

"So I was being sucked under, not knowing what was happening," he said. Kim eventually saw sunlight and made his way towards the surface.

Shocked but unharmed, Wachs was meanwhile surfacing slowly with the help of a divemaster, not realizing that she and Kim had just survived one of the worst natural disasters in modern history.

Still unaware that disaster had struck, the pair made one last dive before heading to shore.

As they headed back to shore, the horror of what had just happened began to reveal itself as the couple started encountering debris and human corpses in the water.

"There were numerous bodies that were floating out from the shoreline, and we brought in a few ourselves," Kim said.

When they got to the beach, little was left of the popular resort and the couple's cabana had been destroyed.

"It was indescribable to see several people dead in the wreckage," Wachs said. "It was unbelievable."

The couple spent the rest of the day helping to carry injured survivors to the island's helicopter pad before making arrangements to return home.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.