Strolling along the beach in bikinis and sipping cocktails beside hotel pools, Western tourists on Malaysia's resort island of Penang were determined to get the most out of their holidays on Monday despite death and destruction wrought by tidal waves.

As thousands of distraught foreigners fled once-idyllic Asian coastal resorts from Sri Lanka to Thailand after tidal waves spawned by an earthquake off Indonesia killed 22,000 people, several tourists told AFP they had no intention of leaving Penang early.

With jet skis and other tourist sea toys lying mangled on the shore, they watched search and rescue boats plying the waters off the upscale Batu Ferringhi beach bring ashore the bodies of a 70-year-old man and an eight-year-old boy, taking Malaysia's death toll to at least 60.

"We are not going to leave just because of this," said Grant Brewster, a 43-year-old Briton on holiday with his wife Gennifer and their two children.

As the couple lounged in deckchairs at their beachfront hotel, Brewster told AFP that because of previous experience of an earthquake in Cyprus he knew a tsunami was possible after hearing news of the massive earthquake off neighbouring Indonesia on Sunday.

"I kept an eye out and when I saw a white line on the horizon I knew immediately a huge wave was coming."

He grabbed his wife and children and ran into the hotel before the wave, described by a local fisherman as "as high as coconut trees", hit the beach.

"We were paragliding an hour before the tsunami struck, so we were very lucky," said Gennifer. "It's been an exciting Christmas, but fortunately we are safe."

Why no warning?

Forty-six people died on Penang, once known as the "Pearl of the Orient", none of them foreigners, according to the police.

Australian property consultant Sam Wahbe said: "We are not going to leave. It is unlikely that it will happen again.

"My wife and I were sitting on deckchairs and enjoying the sun when the tsunami hit. Suddenly the hotel siren went off and people were blowing whistles.

"We could see waves appearing on the horizon. There was a lot of warning, about 10 minutes, before the tsunami hit the beach."

British factory worker Kenneth Blunt, 52, said, "The tsunami will not drive me out of this place."

He pointed out that all the 46 deaths on Penang were of locals. "It is strange that they were not warned. Often after an earthquake there will be tsunamis. Why did no one warn the people?" he asked.

It is a question 19-year-old Mohamad Saufi Mohamad Hassan will be asking himself. He was also on Batu Ferringhi beach when the tidal wave struck some four hours after the quake off Sumatra and was picknicking with his mother and two sisters.

He managed to grab hold of a tree as the wave hit, but his mother and sisters were swept away. "It happened within seconds," he said. "None of us were in the water. We were just sitting on the rocks and getting our food ready."

White dragon

Armed forces chief General Zahidi Zainuddin, who visited the area Monday with Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, told AFP : "There should have been some warning system to alert the public and fishermen."

Malaysian masseuse Ann Low, 43, was working on a Japanese tourist on the beach when he spotted a strange line on the horizon.

"The Japanese knew what it was and told me to get out quickly," she said. "It was like a white dragon, it was a very unusual wave."

Spokesman for several Penang hotels said no guests had checked out because of the tsunamis.

Meanwhile, the police today estimated that at least 60 people have been killed and some 183 injured in Malaysia by huge tidal waves triggered by the massive earthquake off the Indonesian coast.

As of 8:00 am the total number of dead in four states stood at 60 but many more people were missing from the worst-hit area on the holiday resort island of Penang and neighbouring Kedah state, according to the latest figures provided by the police.

A total of 46 bodies had been found on Penang, 10 from Kedah, three from Perak and one in central Selangor state.

Malaysia's death toll was far lower than that in many other countries in the region because its west coast was protected by the Indonesian island of Sumatra from the tsunamis which rolled thousands of kilometres across open seas to wreak devastation on distant shores.