Clever 10-year-old Tilly Smith from Surrey in England is acclaimed a hero in Phuket, Thailand after saving her parents and hundreds of fellow holidaymakers from the tsunami wave that hit Maikhao beach in Phuket on December 26.

Young Tilly warned the people on the beach that a Tsunami wave was about to hit the shores, minutes before the wall of water rolled in on Phuket beach.

Tilly was enjoying the pleasures of Maikhao beach in Phuket with her parents Penny and Colin Smith and her 7-year-old sister Holly when suddenly the sea retreated very fast for several hundred meters and the water began to bubble.

When the sea-water suddenly pulled back, many foreign holidaymakers and local Thais became curious and wanted to go look what was going on, but young Tilly Smith froze in horror as her mind immediately went back to the geography lesson, her teacher, Mr. Kearney gave only two weeks before she and her family flew out to the resort island of Phuket in Thailand.

Tilly started to talk very agitated, her mother said, she was talking about earthquakes under the sea, tectonic plates and tsumani ... tsumani. Mummy, we must get of the beach, a tsumani is coming, Tilly said. Tilly got more and more hysterical and started screaming Tsunami wave ... Tsunami wave.

We simply did not understand what Tilly was talking about until suddenly she started shouting the magic words: Tidal Wave ... Tidal wave, Tsunami is coming.

Within seconds Tilly's hysterical words, "Tidal Wave", spread like wildfire on Phuket's Maikhao beach and people started running inland. Moments later Maikhao beach in Phuket was deserted as everyone was running to higher grounds.

We ran off the beach as fast as we could, said Tilly's father Colin Smith, and took refuge on the first floor of our hotel. Minutes later, a massive wall of water rolled over the beach, destroying everything in its path.

Later it turned out that Maikhao beach was one of the only places in Phuket where no one was injured or killed and Tilly Smith has been locally hailed as a hero.

Its extraordinary to think that all the people who were on Maikhao beach escaped because Tilly is a good student and studies hard at school, said Craig Smith, the manager of the JW Marriott Hotel in Phuket where Tilly and her family were on holiday.

A tsunami wave is not like shown in sensation movies, where you see a huge wave coming from far on the horizon. Its more like a sudden surge of water that comes out of the blue with very little warning ahead.

Tilly modestly said to reporters: Two weeks ago, our geography teacher, Mr. Kearney, gave a lesson about underwater earthquakes due to shifting of tectonic plates and how those underwater earthquakes can trigger tsunami waves. We were on the beach, and the sea-water started to go funny exactly as our teacher had told us. I recognized what was going to happen and knew a tsunami was on its way.