Posted on 02/07/2007 11:55:09 AM PST by rawhide
It was just a normal shopping trip when Jaeyana Beuraheng bade farewell to her eight children as she left to cross the border into Malaysia, but it would be 25 years before she would find her way home.
Now, at the age of 76, she has been reunited with her family and has finally told how her misfortune began when she boarded the wrong bus.
Jaeyana would almost certainly have made it home without mishap had it not been that she speaks only Yawi, a dialect spoken by Muslims in southern Thailand. But unable to write, read, or speak Thai or English she boarded a bus for Bangkok, about 800 miles north, by mistake rather than travelling back to her home in Narathiwat.
Bewildered by the noise and traffic of the capital she boarded another bus hoping it would take her home...
This one took her to Chiang Mai, close to the border with Burma and another 400 miles away. There she became lost and unable to explain her predicament. In Chiang Mai she spent five years begging and with her dark skin was taken to be a member of a hill tribe.
...Unable to determine where she came from, officials sent her to a social services hostel where she has been ever since....
...Jaeyana would probably have spent the rest of her life at the hostel had not three students from her home province who spoke her language arrived at the centre for training last month. They struck up a friendship and she was able to tell them how she became separated from her family.
The students made inquiries and found her youngest son, Mamu... They sent him her picture by mobile phone.
...“I remembered her face even though I have not seen her for 25 years,” he said
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I remember a story awhile back of a soldier captured during WWII somewhere in Eastern Europe, who was not released, because no one could communicate with him. They thought he was crazy and put him in a mental instutuion. It was not until many, many years later that someone, who was visiting the hosptial, spoke his language, and finally the truth came to be known.
A 50-year-old, 5 years, never learned enough of the local language to say "I'm lost, can someone get me a translator?"
Meanwhile, we have "reality shows" where we send people all over the world and they make it back in days.
See... this is why I don't like public transportation.
Especially buses.
Thailand?
...through the open window she'd hand Charlie a sandwich...
She should have taken that right turn at Albuquerque.
I wonder why the search didn't find it. I searched before I posted? Anyway, sorry, repost police!
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Me too. I have a phobia about getting on the wrong one.
If she was looking for a bus in Albuquerque, she'd have stood by the curb for 25 years.
Terrific old song... Kingston Trio, right?
i know some husbands who moan and groan about watching
after the kids, so their wife can spend just an afternoon
out shopping... ;)
seriously though, i'm glad she's back home with her family.
that must have been just terrible for all of them.
ping
Must have been a Thai-dyed blonde.
See, I think the Beatles got their lyrics wrong with that "Yellow Submarine" bit. It should'a been:
We all live on an MTA bus
An MTA bus
An MTA bus
It's not like we're going to get out of this alive, or anything...
Yeah, I'm not buying it...I've got two kids and there are days...
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