Phuket woman wins top “Mum” award

CHERNG TALAY: Phuket native Ladda Pongjarean, 51, the housekeeping supervisor at The Chedi resort, has been awarded this year’s Best Mother award for enduring difficult circumstances. The award is one of 15 Best Mother awards handed out on Mother’s Day (August 12) in Bangkok by HRH Princess Soamsavali. The annual awards have various categories and are given to mothers who have been nominated from throughout Thailand. K. Ladda was left alone to care for her four-year-old son and her daughter after her husband died more than 20 years ago. Over the years, her support for her children resulted in her son graduating in engineering from Kasetsart University, in Bangkok, and her daughter becoming a nurse at Thalang Hospital. “I was very excited when I found out that I had been nominated as a best mother. But I never expected that I would be chosen because there were four other mothers in Phuket who were nominated,” said K. Ladda, after returning from Bangkok yesterday. “Raising the children has been very tiring because I have had to be the mother, the father and sometimes their friend. But I’m very lucky that my children have never done anything seriously wrong. “When my husband died, I thought that I had no time to be sad. I had to get going for my children’s sake. I decided that, since I gave birth to them, I had to look after them,” she said. André Kretschmann, general manager of The Chedi, said, “We believe that K. Ladda deserves this award very much. She has been with us 18 years and I think she’s faced a lot of difficult circumstances in her life. “She has raised two children alone and she is one of only a few people I’ve met who always has a positive outlook on life.”