My partner and I were at the Peninsula Bangkok on the morning of December 26th when the earthquake off Sumatra struck. The rolling tremors awakened us, as the Peninsula's slender tower swayed quite noticeably. The wood panelling in the rooms creaked and doors swayed, but the hotel experienced no visible damage. We were surprised to note that none of the windows broke, since the shaking was so strong.

At first I thought it was a very strong wind causing the building to sway, but the clear skies and trees outside indicated no storm. A terrorist attack crossed my mind, but we heard no explosion. That left only an earthquake as a possible explanation. Hotel staff, with no experience in earthquakes, understandably had no idea what was happening. Many guests evacuated the hotel on their own initiative and stood outside, which, as a former Southern California resident I later realized, was exactly the wrong place to be, in danger of falling glass. Things returned to normal swiftly, and hotel staff shared what little information they had promptly. Management distributed notes to everyone promptly informing us of the cause of the mysterious shaking and assuring us that the hotel was design to endure earthquakes, which it did.

The news from the South of Thailand trickled in very slowly. Hours after the shaking, CNN, the BBC, and local Thai media had next to no information about the earthquake itself (just snippets to the effect that an earthquake had been felt in Indonesia), so it comes as little surprise that those in Phuket had no meaningful warning of the oncoming tsunami.