Jaeyaena Beuraheng, 76, was tearfully reunited with relatives yesterday at Phitsanulok's Wang Thong social service centre.

Twenty-five years ago, Malay-speaking Narathiwat resident Jaeyaena thought she was boarding a bus bound for Narathiwat from Malaysia.

Not being able to read, write or speak Thai, she did not know the bus was headed for Bangkok.

When she arrived in the capital, she tried to get back to the South but compounded her crisis by taking a bus to Chiang Mai instead.

There she spent the next five years begging.

She was arrested in 1987 and has been in the social service centre since then.

Yesterday "overjoyed" relatives arrived in Phitsanulok after a 25-hour journey to take Jaeyaena home.

Her youngest son Mamu, 35, said through a translator that he was 10 when his mother disappeared after going to visit her husband across the border.

Mamu and his seven brothers and sisters searched in vain for years in Thailand and Malaysia until they were told Jaeyaena had been run over by a train in Yala.

They continued to make merit for her every year.

Earlier this month, three students from Mamu's neighbourhood training at the Phitsanulok social service centre - Nuriyanee Waekeuji, 20, Sumaiya Sawaeko, 19, and Arsor Rormeudee, 19 - met Jaeyaena. They photographed her with their mobile telephone and sent the picture to Mamu.

"I was shocked and overjoyed when I saw the picture. It was certainly my mother. I remembered her face, even though I've not seen her for 25 years," Mamu said.

Staff at the centre had for years assumed Jaeyaena was Mon or Shan. The three Narathiwat women were the only ones who had been able to communicate with her.

It was only then that Jaeyaena's tragic story emerged, centre manager Jintana Satjang said.

Manaschai Ananta

The Nation

PHITSANULOK