"As soon as I could walk properly, we came back," said Steve McQueenie, a detective for London's Metropolitan Police, explaining the powerful urge to revisit Thailand just six months after the December 26, 2004, disaster to make sense of the unfathomable.
On Boxing Day this year the 46-year-old Glaswegian again returned, joining hundreds of other survivors at a candlelight vigil in the resort hub of Khao Lak, southwest Thailand, to mark a decade since the tsunami claimed 220,000 lives across 14 nations.
Sitting before a tranquil Andaman Sea, just a few metres (feet) from where they had stayed, he recalls the sudden "huge brown wall of water" that ripped apart their bungalow and plunged him underwater.
"When I reached the surface, everything I could see was water. I couldn't see any buildings above it, I couldn't see inland really, and it just felt we'd been dropped in the middle of a really rough ocean."
In spite of a severe leg injury the policeman limped towards the road and was eventually transported up into the hills by Thais who feared more waves would strike.
He was reunited hours later with Nicola.
McQueenie's voice breaks as he remembers the "selfless" help of local Thais, aid that spurred the couple to raise USD 15,500 for ravaged communities around Khao Lak once they returned home.
"There's always going to be part of us that kind of belongs here," McQueenie said.
Yet many foreigners share a desire to return to a place with which they share a bond forged through tragedy.
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