My Niece Nong Ja, Isaan Thailand.

This is the girl that keeps me sane, well also drives me a little crazy at times but I love her death. Nong Ja has been such a huge influence on Noot and my life as we have brought her up.

I have had people ask, “Why do you and Noot look after Ja and not her parents?”

I remember asking this question when I was a greenhorn here in Isaan Thailand and going out into Barn Nawk (Hillbilly country). “Why are there so many young kids with old people? (Grandparents and 40 plus people)”

And when the answer was their parents are away working in Bangkok, abroad and so forth, I would shake my head in disgust. I would think how bad these people were and that they were not good parents and so forth.

I knew Isaan was meant to be the poor area of Thailand. I had read the demeaning stories and heard how Bankokians spoke of Isaan people.

The fact is that all the factories need labour, the shops need assistants, the sex tourism industry needs the girls to satisfy the customers, and on it goes. This labour needs to come from somewhere and the Isaan area is huge, a massive area. There are not a lot of jobs in the Isaan area. Especially for the thousands upon thousands of graduates from the universities each year.

These kids need to work, they cannot work the farms, their parents do this, and a few of the others from the family, so they are sent to the city to find work, send money home to their parents from their meagre wage they earn in the city to help with the upbringing of offspring, parents and at times brothers that sit around drinking and smoking each day.

I remember one little boy, he was about 5 years old, his grandparents looked after him. He ran around in the village, half the time naked, filthy dirty and so on. When I enquired to where his parents were, I got;

Dad disappeared a long time ago and his mum works for a telephone company in Vietnam. How often does she come back to see him? “She hasn’t been back for three years, no time or money,” I was told.

This happens in villages all over Thailand, I used to joke of the missing generation, the late teens to 30 year old girls, many are just not there. There are the young kids, and then you skip through to 40’s up. There are plenty of 20 to 30 year old boys usually. Many are useless and spend there days doing a little work before drinking each evening at a local shop, fighting and riding off on their motorbikes smashed.

Ja's mum works in Singapore and comes back every 6 weeks for 10 days, and her father lives here in Ubon Ratchathani but runs his business so this leaves little time for him to look after her.

At first Ja’s parents were going to send her to Bangkok to her father’s parents but this idea was quickly knocked on the head. Then it was Noot’s mother, but her mum and dad wanted her brought up away from the Thai village lifestyle. Not that there is anything wrong with this.

Anyway, they approached Noot and me, Noot had just finished her degree and I wanted her to continue studying. Noot was not sure what she wanted to do. They offered her an amount of money per month that would take her years of hard work to earn. She earns double the salary of what my old team teachers at Assumption College earn.

I told Noot that it was her choice, but it would not help her if she wanted to try and gain employment with a gap after she graduated. She has continued her Japanese studies online, and I have had her doing some work for me during the day which means more time for me at home and less hours on the computer.

Ja will be off to school next year, well kindergarten part-time and this will free up more time for Noot and then in a few years she will be off to primary school. But this is not going to be in Thailand, 100% sure of that. This is still about three years away but plans are already in place for a move of destinations.

Is Noot doing the right thing? Should have she continued her studies? Would having a master degree in a certain field be worth a grain of salt anywhere but in Thailand, a bachelor’s degree isn’t in many fields.

All I can say is that I am so happy that Noot did decide that we would look after Ja fulltime, she has enriched my life so much, I have so many amazing memories just over the last two and a half years and look forward to all the years to come.