Obviously you know what this page is about, other wise you wouldn't be here now reading it. It seems that the classical way of marriage is that the guy and girl dates for a while, and then after a number of months, the guy finally asks the girl to marry him. This may or may not include the man asking the bride to be's father for her hand in marriage.
Miss Chonthira and I are different. We haven't had the luxury of dating. We've had to carry out "dating" via the internet, mostily ICQ and now Yahoo Messanger. We've been talking for a few years, starting way back in Febuary of 1999 when I was still back in Eugene, OR. It was Chonthira who originally messaged me on ICQ. It was more to learn English than to find a Farang (Western) boy friend. She was just finishing up college and was bored. I had dropped out of college, and was working for the local school district three quarters time, so I had time to chat.
That lasted for a number of months. The we didn't talk much for a year there, because she was in Bangkok working. A couple of years ago, she moved back to Chiang Mai to be closer to her family. Her new job allowed us to talk more often, and soon we were talking many hours, and I was staying up late into the night to talk with her.
We talked and talked, and finally the dam broke sometime in June or July of 2000. We started to feel more like boy friend and girl friend than just friends. We talked as much as we could, but it wasn't till August of 2001 that I finally made my first trip to Thailand to visit her. (Oh, did I forget to mention that she was from Thailand??) I only stayed for 9 days, but it was an amazing few days with her. (You can ready about it more at Trip to Thailand.)
As we talked, the more I wanted to see her. So in April of 2002, I went to see her for just over two weeks and it was so good to be with her. It was natural to go out for meals and drinkg. It didn't feel like we were strangers even though we'd only seen each other face to face for only a couple weeks.
When I got back, I found out that I was laid off. For the next four months it was hard to be back. I was looking for jobs, but spending most of my time talking with Chonthira. Finally, I realized that it was stupid for me to continue to live in the Bay Area, and so I went to Thailand for TWO months to look for works. I didn't find a job in Thailand, but it did make me realize that things were very good between us.
Luckily, I found a six week contract less than two weeks after returning from Thailand. As time went on, the subject of marriage has come up. The problem is that the State Department (of the United States of America) doesn't like to hand out Visas to people from Thailand. This makes things difficult for having her come to visit to see how things are here in America. We couldn't just have her fly over here to visit. We have been talking about different ways to have her visit but not tie the not quite yet.
I want to respect the Thai traditions and have a Thai wedding. Chonthira wants to respect her parents by getting married in Thailand before leaving it. Finally though, I went through some stressful times, and realized just how much I needed Chonthira to be a part of my life. So, today (December 16th, 20002), shortly after 10pm Pacific Standard Time, I call Chonthira up just after she was getting back to work from lunch to ask her to marry me!
Her first reaction was that I was joking. We have talked about it often, but I had never flat out asked her to marry me. Then when I told her that I was serious she said no! The reason she said no was because I had told her that I would not marry her till she had completed her masters. Once she realized that I was serious and really did mean it, she said yes! Now I'm very happy!
The next few weeks will be busy as we try to figure out the best way to have the ceremony in Thailand and have her complete her Master's Thesis (and yes, I still only have a high school diploma) and finally get her a finacee visa to come to legally marry in the United States.