Tourists told to get off James Bond island after devastating tsunami

About 18,000 people were killed when coastal areas in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives and Malaysia were devastated by waves as high as 10 meters (33 feet) after a magnitude-9 quake off the coast of Indonesia yesterday.

The waves slammed into Phuket, Phi Phi, Krabi and other beach areas crowded with tourists during the year-end holidays. Phuket, about 900 kilometers south of Bangkok, attracted as many as 4 million tourists last year, two-fifths of all visitors to Thailand. Resorts in the Maldives, a nation of islands in the Indian Ocean popular with divers, were also affected.

Tourists go to sunbathe on Phuket's beaches, dive among coral and turtles and tour the location where the 1974 James Bond movie "Man With the Golden Gun" was filmed.

Bantita Aunarom, spa manager at the Sri Lanka hotel on Koh Lanta, an island south of the Thai resort island of Krabi, said in a phone interview that while some guests received bruises, there were no serious injuries or people missing.

"The situation now is okay," Anunarom said. "Everybody is safe. We're trying to get our guests off the island."

Thanks to `JP` for the alert.

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