Hard hit: Nam Khem village in Thailand, after it was devastated by the tsunami. Photo: Tamara Dean

Mackie Chotprapast had no idea a wave of water was surging towards the Aussie Bungalows at more  than 800km/h.

As the massive wave – powered by the equivalent of 23,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs –  approached, the seven-old Mackie was happily oblivious, unwrapping a new bike.

"I was very excited," the now-17-year-old remembers of that Boxing Day morning 10 years ago in the village of Nam Khem in the Khao Lak area of Thailand's Andaman Coast.

Grim reminder: One of the boats washed inland. Photo: Alan Morison

Mackie was focused on going for a ride with his two brothers, but his day of excitement was to turn to tragedy. By its end, half the villagers had been killed.

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Working as a chef in the Andaman Resort on Phuket island, an hour's drive along the coast from the village, Mackie's mother Yupin Chotprapast was the first family member to see waves crashing ashore.

"I saw people running from the beach towards the restaurant ... the sea was rising up," she says.

Family photo of Australian John Dimmock, his wife Pranom Chotprapast and sons Nott and Sor, who were all killed by the tsunami. Photo: Alan Morison

Yupin's first instinct was to warn her family at Aussie Bungalows. John Dimmock had quit his Commonwealth Bank job in Brisbane four years earlier and built the bungalows on Laem Pom beach,  where its open-air restaurant sat next to pristine white sands.

Yupin telephoned her sister Pranom, who had been happily married to Dimmock for more than 12years and was caring for Mackie and his brothers Nott, nine, and Sor, eight. Yupin told her about the "big flood" she had seen, urging  her to flee. But Pranom did not accept there was any danger.

"She said it was a beautiful day there. Everything was fine."

Pranom's sister Yupin Chotprapast today. Photo: Alan Morison

But five to 10 minutes after the first wall of water hit Phuket, an even bigger wave roared through the Andaman resort.

"I called Pranom again and frantically told her that they all should move," Yupin says.

Mackie, Nott,  and Sor had headed off to the beach on their bikes.

Tsunami by numbers.

"Pranom said she would go and get them," Yupin remembers.

The waves that struck Khao Lak were up to 10 metres high and exceptionally strong.  Because some of the tsunami's energy was trapped in the nearby Similan islands, even greater power was directed east towards an  area dotted with tourist resorts.

The first of several waves hit Laem Pom at 10.40am - two hours and 24minutes after the world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years triggered a series of devastating tsunamis that hit 13 countries. The waves were to kill 226,000 people.

Mackie, now a tall high school student, remembers Pranom running to the beach and yelling at him and his brothers to run for it. "I was on my bike and saw the wave coming," he says.

Mackie was picked up and tossed around by a foaming torrent and carried over 39-year-old Pranom and the others boys, before he lost sight of them.

He grabbed an uprooted coconut tree to keep himself afloat before an even bigger wave lifted him up again and dumped him in a pond. His was trapped underneath debris-strewn water, apparently near death.

"I don't remember much. I was sort of half asleep, half awake," he says.

A Burmese woman searching for her son saw Mackie's body and pulled his head out the water.

He was sitting at the edge of the pond in shock when Nong, a local woman who worked at Aussie Bungalows, recognised him and took him to nearby Phang Nga hospital with a cut head and deep gash in his arm. He was one of the first of thousands of victims to arrive there.

Dimmock was washed away with his bungalows. His body was found a couple of days later and repatriated to Australia - one of 28 Australians killed in the tsunami.

The victims also included Pranom and Nott, both dual Australian-Thai citizens. Sor's body was never recovered. A plaque on a wave-shaped memorial in a park at Laem Pom beachfront says the Dimmock family will be remembered forever.

Yupin has since had another child, a one year-old called Jedi. She says the baby helps "heal the pain".

But Yupin remains tormented, wondering if it was actually Pranom's ashes she threw into the sea so that, in a symbolic gesture, they would reach John wherever he was in Australia.

Amid confusion in the days after the tsunami, Yupin searched gruesome lines of bodies, their faces largely unrecognisable, and found one with a crooked toe, a family trait.

The body had clothes that appeared the same as Pranom wore.

The family claimed the body and conducted a cremation.

But 12 months later officials of the Australian-led Thai Tsunami Victim Identification and Repatriation Centre called to ask her to come and collect Pranom's remains that they had identified.

She told them she had already cremated her sister "but they kept calling and calling and insisting".

Eventually the family accepted the second body and conducted another cremation, but this time Yupin never collected the ashes.

"I did my best. I was sure [the first body] was my sister's," Yupin says, adding she now is not sure.  

The bodies of 369 unidentified tsunami victims remain in a cemetery at Bang Maruan, near Khao Lak which has been turned into a war-grave style memorial.

Thai officials concede the bodies will probably never be claimed.

Ceremonies marking the 10th anniversary are being held across the countries devastated by the tsunami, including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India,  Malaysia and the Maldives.

Thailand, where an estimated 5400 people were killed, is marking it with ceremonies at Khao Lak and Phi Phi island, where saffron-robed monks will chant and pray and there will be poetry reading, wreath laying and candlelight vigils.

But many survivors are not returning for the gatherings. Ten years later they still prefer to block the horror of what happened from their memories.

Nam Khem now looks like a typical quiet Thai seaside village. The scars of that morning 10 years ago are hidden as people have moved into rebuilt houses, some of them in areas that were devastated.

Two fishing boats pushed more than a kilometre ashore are still sitting in a field, a stark reminder of the wave's powerful fury.

If there are future disasters, towers with loudspeakers have been set up to warn villages in advance. Tall concrete buildings have been built as shelter to hide in an emergency.

Yupin, 45, and her family live in a house adjacent to the Laem Pom beach. She says she does not worry about another tsunami.

"If it happens, it happens. There is no point trying to run," she says.

"If you die, you die."