HONG KONG, Jan 5 (AP) -- An alert hotel manager woke up martial arts novelist Louis Cha and helped him evacuate his hotel room in Thailand as the tsunami hit the building, a magazine reported Wednesday.

The Hong Kong author -- whose pen name is Jin Yong or Kam Yung -- was staying at a beach-front hotel on the hard-hit resort island of Phuket, Eastweek magazine reported in its latest issue.

He and his wife were asleep in their sixth floor room when the tsunami struck, but the hotel's manager woke them up by beating on their door. He led them to a higher floor as the hotel became flooded, according to the report.

Cha's daughter and two grandchildren had to flee killer waves while enjoying breakfast on the hotel's first floor, the report said. His entire family escaped unscathed, Eastweek reported.

A woman answering the phone at Cha's offices in Hong Kong said no one was immediately available for comment.

Cha is a leading martial arts novelist in the Chinese-speaking world. His famous works include "The Book and the Sword" and "The Deer and the Cauldron."

Deadly tsunami waves devastated southern Asian coastlines on Dec. 26 after a magnitude-9.0 earthquake struck off Indonesia's coast. The United Nations expects the death toll to hit 150,000.