Soe, a 24-year-old Burmese migrant worker in Thailand, was setting tables for lunch at the Khao Lak beachfront resort where he had been employed for a year when the Indian Ocean tsunami hit the hotel - its force knocking him unconscious.

Badly injured, Soe awoke to find himself in a rubber plantation 100m away, surrounded by bodies. After dragging severely wounded survivors towards the main road, he ran to his hillside shanty to search for his wife and one-year-old daughter, whom he found unharmed.