Miss a bus, be separated from your family for 25 years

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070208/od_afp/thailandmissingoffbeat_070208075500

A Thai mother who was lost for 25 years after catching the wrong bus home has spoken of her ordeal after being reunited with her family thanks to simple song.

The last time Jaeyaena Beuraheng saw her seven children was in 1982 when she left south Thailand on one of her regular shopping trips across the border to nearby Malaysia.

She never returned, and police later told her family that she had apparently been killed in a traffic accident.

In fact, Jaeyaena had simply taken the wrong bus home -- an error that would have been easy to fix except that she only speaks the local dialect of Malay known as Yawi, according to officials at the homeless shelter where the 76-year-old has lived for two decades.
...
She was heading home from her shopping trip when she mistakenly hopped on a bus to Bangkok, some 1,150 kilometers (700 miles) north of her home in Narathiwat province.

In Bangkok, unable to read Thai and speaking a language few Thais can understand, she again took a wrong bus, this time to Chiang Mai, another 700 kilometers (430 miles) further north.

There she ended up as a beggar for five years, until she was sent to a homeless shelter in the central Thai province of Phitsanulok in 1987.
...
Her shocked family sent her youngest son and her eldest daughter to meet her and bring her home on Tuesday, the official said.

"She remembered all of her children's names. But at first she couldn't recognise her youngest son, but she recognised her eldest daughter," said the official, who was at their reunion.

Her children took her back to their family home in Dusongyo village, in a remote corner of Narathiwat, where her children and grandchildren were still hugging and kissing her two days after her return.

 

Re: Miss a bus, be separated from your family from 25 years

That is seriously messed up. No phones? Not a single person could understand her all those 25 years?

 

Re: Miss a bus, be separated from your family from 25 years

That's what I am thinking. Also, she never picked up on the language being spoken around her for those 25 years?

 

Re: Miss a bus, be separated from your family from 25 years

The world is a beautiful fantastic idiotically wonderful place.

 

Re: Miss a bus, be separated from your family from 25 years

What, no youtube video to go with this thread? I'm pissed.

 

Re: Miss a bus, be separated from your family from 25 years

I'm searching. I'm MC Search right now. Shiz.

 

Re: Miss a bus, be separated from your family from 25 years

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/offbeat/2007/02/thursday_breakfast_bender_9.html

 

LJB, not to be confused with LBJ's in Morrisville, Vermont, beat me to it. Good job.

 

I bet she'd had enough of the seven kids, and decided to get some peace and quiet.

 

That is one crazy ass story.

 

Did she have a mullet wig fused to her skull, too?

 

A quarter-century ago, everyone would have been reunited after the kids sent her a long distance dedication via Casey Kasem.