CHENGDU, CHINA: Taking time to smell the roses and the Malaysian penchant for buying souvenirs saved the group of 26 Malaysian tourists from being harmed by the earthquake on Monday.

The group was supposed to have lunch at 1pm but they requested their tour guide to stop at a minority group's settlement on the way from Jiuzhaigou.

"We spotted the minority people on the way and decided to alight and give them some food,'' said 51-year-old Wong Siew Moi from Raub, Pahang.

Wong said they spent time taking pictures, talking and buying souvenirs from them while their driver washed the coach.

"We then continued our journey to our restaurant but we did not enter the restaurant in Maoxian immediately because we saw roses in front of the outlet which were so beautiful that we wanted to take pictures of them,'' she said.

All this delayed their departure to Dujiangyan as when they were about to start lunch around 2pm, the earth began to move!

"Everything started to shake and things began to fall,'' said 55-year-old Soo Sow Wan from Ipoh.

Her friend Chan Lai Yoke, 55, said they had no time to feel scared but ran for their lives after someone shouted "Earthquake!"

Slabs of concrete and twisted metal were flying all over, said Chan, adding that they felt like it was a scene from a movie.

They spent the past five days sleeping in their coach which was not damaged.

Another Malaysian, Ang Kooi Sim, said she and her tour members had just sat down for lunch when the earth began to shake.

"The dishes had not yet been served and we were about to drink tea," said the 41-year-old who joined the Jiuzhaigou tour to Sichuan with her 60-year-old mother and two siblings.

"At 2.06pm, my handphone rang once and the call was cut off," she said.

Ang said she was about to put her handphone back into a bag when everything started to rattle.

"The light fell. I tried to run but I fell and my elder sister came back to pull me up," she said.

"I saw an 80-year-old tour member holding onto a chair in a crouching position and could not move.

"But I did not have time to help her as everything was falling," she said.

The restaurant was filled with dust and then the rattling stopped.

The 80-year-old person crawled out from the mess unhurt, she said.

"We don't know how long it lasted. I think it was a few minutes."

The group was stranded in Maoxian for five days.

"Our local tour guide lodged a report with the local police station and the police found a place for us to stay.

"Our coach was not damaged and we put up in it."

A kind-hearted local invited six of the Malaysians to sleep in a makeshift tent near where the coach was parked.

Ang commended the Chinese government, police and locals who went out of their way to help them.

"The locals, who did not even have enough food for themselves, invited us to eat with them.

"They cooked porridge and sent it to us," said a very touched Ang.

"We heard the helicopters, but they were not there for us as they dropped off food and water."

The local police came with good news yesterday afternoon, informing them that they would be airlifted by the military to Chengdu's Fenghuangshan Military Airport. The consul-general of Malaysia in Kunming Ayauf Bachi thanked the Sichuan provincial government, Chinese military, locals and all others who were involved in the search for the group.

"The Chinese Government had responded to us positively,'' he said at the restaurant here where the group was brought to dine after they arrived safely at the Fenghuangshan Military Airbase.