Luckily the day ended with smiles which was good as it had so nearly started with tears.

Joanne wears her heart on her sleeve and any emotion is clear to see. At 8:00 this morning her face wasn’t a happy one. Not surprising when your mum is heading to Thailand for a couple of weeks and you’re about to be the only woman in the house.

Deciding what to grow in the garden to eat (flowers out of favour and vegetables in) and what to cook tomorrow took her mind off it but the trip to school was a little clingy and, unlike the other day when I got pushed out, there was a hug as I left.

This evening all was fine and she was back to her old self running ahead of us eager to get back home. Later I stood in my kitchen heating the Thai curry and rice that Fhai had made for me wit the sun streaming through the window and smiled. The smells of Thailand and the sun’s warmth made me think back to when I was there and hope that Fhai has a good time in the land of smiles.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A 76-year-old Malay Muslim 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 been reunited with her family, officials and domestic media said on Tuesday.

Unable to speak, read or write Thai, Jaeyaena Beuraheng boarded a bus in Malaysia thinking it was bound for Narathiwat, one of three Muslim-majority provinces in Buddhist Thailand’s far south.

Instead, she ended up 1,200 km (750 miles) to the north in Bangkok. Her predicament grew worse when she boarded a bus she thought was heading south only to end up in Chiang Mai, another 700 km to the north, the Nation newspaper reported.

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

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