A County Durham survivor of the tsunami tragedy in South-East Asia has told of his miracle escape.

Matthew Walsh, 21, of Lanchester, cheated death when he took a boat trip off the Phi Phi islands, in Thailand, just minutes before the giant waves crashed into the coastline.

He had missed an earlier boat when pals Jack Harrison and David McNiven, both 21, of Jesmond, Newcastle, failed to turn up after sleeping in.

Matthew got back to discover the devastation caused by the disaster, which has claimed thousands of lives.

Former politics student Matthew said there were rotting bodies everywhere, open sewage systems and devastation.

He said they saw bodies washing in and out of the water and that there had been few survivors.

Matthew and his friends made a televised appeal from the airport before they headed home this week, calling on people in Britain to dig deep to help those devastated by the tragedy.

Matthew described how, because he missed the earlier boat trip, he and university friend Peter Jorgensen, of Leeds, took a different boat to the idyllic Maya Bay, scene of the hit movie, The Beach. In an amazing stroke of luck, their trip took them out of the way of the giant tsunami waves that rocked the island they had left behind.