Where's Reg

In my previous post I wrote that there was something important that I had to do during our time in Phuket. On the Tuesday (April 15th) of that week I drove from the Greg and Becky’s Oelettes place (where I was staying) to pick up Faa (who was staying with the Griffioen's for the week), for a really special day.

A few months earlier I was thinking of a place to ask Faa to marry me and was reminded of this Island called Koh Kho Khao in Pang Nga. I worked there with MBMSI building homes after the Tsunami of 2004. This Island was very beautiful and it had still not been ruined by tourism. So I knew that during the Songkran break this would be the best place for this very special day.

After driving for over four hours (it was only supposed to take us two hours) we arrived at the ferry. Faa asked the captain, what time the ferry would depart. He told her that we would only have to wait five minutes. Forty five minutes later, we left for the Island. On the way over we asked what time the last ferry was going back to the mainland. We were told the last on was at 6pm. Hearing this we realized that we only had three hours, so I knew I had to be efficient with the time.

As soon as we arrived on the island, we went to a restaurant because we were both so hungry. After a not so good meal, we were off to the beach. I found this overgrown road after driving a few minutes and decided to follow it, hoping it would end at the beach. At the end of the road we got to the beach. We parked the truck close to the beach and then walked the rest of the way.

I brought my backpack with me because I had some very important things in there for Faa. When we arrived at the beach, I prepared a mat for us to sit on and for the set up I was going to do. Within a few minutes, Faa felt rain. Wouldn’t you know, just after I finished laying down the mat and the backpack, it started to rain very hard.

Not only did it rain, we had thunder, lightning too! Since my backpack was waterproof, we decided to stay out in the rain for a bit.

Since we were the tallest objects in the water, I thought it was best for our health to go back to the truck, which was a much safer place. I turned the truck around so that we could sit on the tailgate facing the ocean. This was also nice because I could set up the little snack I had too. I told Faa that she had to keep looking forward and for no reason turn back to peak. Faa was very curious because she could hear me pouring some liquid, opening snacks as well as smelling something burning (candles).

While I was setting up the snack, I slipped off the tailgate and hurt myself. I quickly said, “Don’t look, I hurt myself, but don’t look, it will be ok”. I was able to finally finish setting up the snack without any more injuries. I then told her to turn around. She absolutely loved it! The crazy thing about this was that as soon as I finished, it stopped raining. So I asked her if she wanted to go back to the beach and go for a swim. I brought my backpack with me again because I knew this would be the perfect opportunity to pop the question. She was a little curious as to why I had to bring my backpack if we were going to go swimming. We got to the beach and I dropped off my bag and went into the water. As soon as we got into the water it started to rain again. After a quick laugh, we went back to flip the backpack over because I had the part that was not waterproof exposed to the rain. When we got to the beach, Faa was looking towards the water so I quickly opened my backpack and took out the teddy bear with the ring.

When she turned around I was hiding the teddy bear behind my back. She had a big smile on her face and asked me what I was up to. I then gave her the bear with the ring. I asked her to marry me in Thai, but found out that I had said it wrong. What I actually said was, "Marry?" I kind of forgot a few words. I also made the mistake by taking her right hand to put the ring on. She quickly let me know that I had the wrong hand. After realizing this, I got down on my knee, and took her left hand and asked her to marry me (this time in English) You know what? She said, “YES”!