British sunseekers caught up in Thailand's tsunami disaster have traded swimsuits for shovels in a bid to help rebuild a devastated village.

The foreign travellers-turned-volunteers are helping to rebuild Bang Tao, a village on the resort island of Phuket levelled by the Boxing Day wave.

"You don't really want to be enjoying yourself while something like this is going on," said Russell Kerr, of Maghera, Northern Ireland, who was at a "full-moon party", a youthful all-night dance event, on a Thai beach the day the tsunami hit.

"We've got a good bunch of guys and we're doing as much as we can," he said, dripping with sweat. "We all probably could have been enjoying ourselves and having a good time somewhere else but, yeah, we made the right decision."

About 20 volunteers are working on the Bang Tao project, started by Mike Cegielski, of Springville, New York, who has lived with his family on Phuket for nearly three years.

He left Phuket's Kata Beach minutes before the tsunami hit. He and his family were unscathed.

Mr Cegielski, a business development manager for a Bang Tao hotel, said he and his wife pondered what they could do - "knowing we were 10 minutes from needing help rather than being able to help".

He assisted at a hospital, then returned days later to Bang Tao where he saw people in shock, their community in ruins, then decided something had to be done.

The project's goal is to help the town's 100 families get back on their feet, using donations to repair homes, clear wreckage and to help rebuild businesses by fixing shops or buying equipment, like fishing nets.

"You can't just come in and fix homes," Mr Cegielski said. "Then we would have to keep feeding them because no one bought them boats, no one got the hotels going."

The volunteers hail from Germany, France, Ireland, Britain, Australia, the Netherlands, the United States and Norway. Covered in dirt, they knock down unstable houses, sweep out shops or fill large holes in the beach with rubble. Most lack construction experience.

Some stopped their Thai holidays midway to help. Others came from Singapore, Britain and the United States - including a team of Alaskan firefighters whose usual speciality is search and rescue.

Bang Tao was lined with hotels, bungalows and tourist shops that had sprung up just a year before the tsunami.

Offshore it still looks idyllic, with about 20 red-and-blue fishing boats bobbing on the clear green sea. But onshore there are piles of bricks, capsized boats and flooded cars. At least 30 people died there.

Richard Clinton, a policeman from Memphis, Tennessee, said he was moved to help after seeing images of the destruction.

"I'm tired of just writing a cheque. In America, that's how we help," he said. "That's good, but this is better."