Woman Missing For 25 Years After Taking Wrong Bus

A 76-year-old woman from southern Thailand who got on the wrong bus 25 years ago and ended up living at the other end of the country has finally been reunited with her family.

Unable to speak, read or write Thai, Jaeyaena Beuraheng boarded a bus in Malaysia 25 years ago thinking it was bound for her Muslim-majority province in Thailand's far south.

Instead, she ended up 1,200 km to the north in Bangkok. So she took another bus she thought was heading south only to end up in Chiang Mai, another 700 km to the north.

She eked out a living as a beggar for five years before being arrested in 1987 and put into a centre for homeless people where she has lived ever since.

She was only finally reunited with her eight children, who were told she had been run over by a train, after three students from her province came to work at the centre.

"It was only when the students in Muslim clothes visited her and she started chatting to them that we realised she wasn't mute", says centre director Satjang.

All this time the woman had been known as "Mrs. Mon" because centre staff thought her mutterings sounded like Mon, a tribal language in neighbouring Myanmar.

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