Sarah Lovell and her boyfriend Michael Duff were on a seven-day holiday in Thailand when Michael proposed to her on the resort island of Phi Phi in the south.

Sarah accepted and the couple celebrated as they travelled to the mainland at Phuket for the remainder of their stay.

They reached the beachside town of Patong on Christmas Eve, booking in to the Merlin Beach Resort.

On checking in they mentioned they had just become engaged and the woman at the front desk gave them an upgrade from a lower floor room to one on a higher level.

"The room was beautiful, with petals sprinkled over the bed and was ... overlooking Patong Beach," Sarah said.

On Boxing Day morning, just hours before the tsunami struck, the weather was great and the couple considered going for an elephant ride or lazing around on the famous Phuket beach.

But when Michael had proposed to Sarah in Phi Phi, he put a symbolic silver engagement ring on her finger, as there was no gold on the island.

"Since we were now in Phuket I wanted to buy her a proper diamond engagement ring," Michael said.

"So instead of doing other things we decided to go into Phuket City, which was inland and look for a suitable ring."

That decision most likely saved the lives of the young couple – and the sequence of events which

followed was nothing short of remarkable.

The couple jumped into a taxi and headed for Phuket City along Patong Rd, which runs along the top of the beach.

"As the taxi was going along, the water at the beach appeared to be miles away and people were walking out and picking up fish and things just lying there, or just standing there watching," Michael said. "It was eerie."

The sea recedes in the lead up to a tsunami, but few people at the beach imagined that a 10m wall of water was heading towards them at more than 100km/h.

At a set of traffic lights, a man who obviously knew the taxi driver ran over to them shouting "water, water" and their taxi took off in a hurry.

In Phuket City, the couple did their shopping and when they walked out onto the street, there were people everywhere. They tried to get another taxi back to the beach, without realising the tsunami had struck the coast, but no taxi would take them.

Michael said they managed to book a room in a hotel as the streets were filling up with tourists looking for a place to sleep and all available accommodation was at a premium.

"Here again we were lucky getting a last-minute cancellation," he said.

"We spoke to a number of tourists, who explained to us what had happened after we left Patong, in fact no more than five minutes behind us."

On Monday, after much bargaining, they managed to persuade a reluctant taxi driver to take them back to their hotel at Patong Beach, to retrieve their passports and plane tickets from their room.

But upon arriving at the hotel, they were in complete shock. The bottom two floors were devastated – but their belongings were safe, thanks to their surprise upgrade to the fourth floor.

Fortune smiled on them again when they arrived at the airport and stepped straight onto the flight they had originally booked home, while hundreds of other tourists were desperately trying to flee the chaos.

"It was absolutely amazing," Michael said.

"Everything was so coincidental, we are so grateful we were so lucky.

"In hindsight, there are so many ifs, such as if we had slept in that day in the hotel and gone to the beach or elephant riding; or if I had bought a proper engagement ring in Phi Phi we wouldn't have had to buy another in Phuket City; or if the hotel booking lady hadn't given us a room upgrade we could have been wiped out.

"Possibly the most frightening thought of all for us was if I hadn't proposed to Sarah on Phi Phi, which actually I had not intended, but had planned to do somewhere else.

"Or had I proposed to Sarah earlier and she said 'no', we may have started the trip at Phuket and gone to Phi Phi later. Who knows what the result may have been."

It was reported later that Phi Phi Island was one of the worst hit in the region, with many dead and the holiday resort all but wiped out.

Sarah's mum, Glenda Lovell who lives in Calala, said she was just so relieved when her 22-year-old daughter rang from Thailand to say they were okay.

So was her aunt Jillian Carlon, who works at The Leader. She was even considering flying out to Thailand to track down her eldest niece, who she feared was missing.

"I loved Phi Phi, the holiday was absolutely wonderful, all except the last day," Sarah said.

"It was a trip I shall never forget, getting engaged and being involved in one of the world's greatest natural disasters on my first ever trip overseas."

Michael and Sarah returned safely to their Newcastle home this week.