“come back home” everyone keeps saying this to me lastly, my friends, my family, even in my dream. I had a dream last night. It is normal for me to have a dream every night. I do like it sometimes when I dream about something fantasy.

Last night my dream was about sitting and talking with my aunt and my dad. It's been so long since I last dreamed about him. We were having a snack with seaweed. My aunt told me to go home and I asked her why do I need to do that? I don’t want to. I gave 2 bags of seaweed to my dad. He just takes it and smiles everytime when I dream about my dad. He never changes, never gets older, his smile is still kind and shines. When I look at him I feel the meaning of home.

In my dream i accidently hit my head on the wall. It was painful and I cried a lot. I told my aunt I was hurt. She just laughed and said you are so weak, my dad didn’t say anything, he never said anything in my dream he just put his hand on my head. After that he opened the seaweed, put it in the bowl and gave it to me.

My dream was to cut scenes. I was in the building. It was actually very weird. This is a new place for me. I have never been here before. I do dream of a new place sometime. Before I always dream about my hometown like my school. Actually the only hometown place I dream about is my school. In my dream the building is pink inside and outside with long stairs. I just moved in and tried to change everything in the house. There are five middle aged guys who dye their hair, orange, blue, yellow, green and pink. I change everyone's hair and turn to black color, I make their new look more casual. Everyone hates me for doing that but after everything changes and gets better everyone thanks me for bringing the new life to them.

Before I wake up I'm still dreaming about eating seaweed with my aunt and my dad and I'm still crying. The timeline in my dream is just a mixed up cut between these two scenes until morning. It was too much of a feeling in one night but at least I didn't wake up during a night that was wonderful for me.

I just realised my hometown had been deleted from my dream already. I remember when I was in high school I still dreamed about my hometown sometime but not anymore. When I was young my home was the greatest playground. We had a lot of land with prawns and a crab farm. My dad put some fish in the pond but not for sale. My routine is to go around the farm with my dad checking the water. The water needs to be balanced. We have a little paper to check Ph it needs to be between 1-14 so it means if we got  7 is perfect. I do enjoy every time when checking it like a science class you got a little paper put in the water is can’t be too pink or too blue i don’t know much on that time but i feel like my job is very important if the water not good the animal can’t survived so we have to be careful about that.

Everyone always said to me I'm picky about food. I have a lot of things that I didn't eat. i'm not really mind because that ture and i was so spoiled about food since i was young on our table had to be have at least three dish it mean most of time are more than five. I don’t eat a lot of meat, mostly seafood or fish from the river we enjoy eating.my dad is a master chef. He created a lot of new manu and the taste is just wonderful. My mom does not usually cook. She always complains about housework cooking is not her job.

2019 in Katherine is the first time cooking my dad's dish. I usually don't know how to cook but living in Australia makes me have to do that. The place where I live is so dry and there is nothing around. If we wanted to do grocery it had to drive 30 min by car. when i realize i have to cook myself i thinking about cooking my dad’s soup my favorite is a sour pork legs with thai herb, i never seen anyone one sale this dish in my entire life. 

I don’t really know what the real recipe is. I just try to make it close to my memory. I should have asked him what the recipe was because I really love that dish. I left home when I was 11. I will go back home to visit my family once a year. Every time I come back dad will prepare everything on the first night of every year when I arrive we will have my favorite dish. 

He will start from grill pork leg make the outside skin chrisspy and burn a little bit the sound is very melodic and the smell make your stomach calling for food while he doing this we like to sitting around the bonfire my dad will cut a little piece giving to us. after the grill done he will wash and take out the black burn past out and boiled it for around 30 min i guess he will make sure it tender and soft enough after that he will put the fruit call “ta ling pring” is a local fruit have a very unique sour it sour than lime he will put a little veg mostly is tomato. the ingredient bese on sour and i always like sour soup it’s my childhood taste. everytime when we have this dish on the table i always have extra blow of rice and my mom will give me a compliment for having a big meal.

On the weekend I'm going out to catch fish with my dad and my younger sister. what i used to think when i was 7 is we are going to adventure in the jungle. surrounding my house is a big river but we need to cut the high bush to go through the river. My dad will be the leader. He has a long knife cut the way for us. The plants never stop growing and they grow up very fast. At the end of the way is our little wooden boat. My sister and I were just having fun. We didn't work much. My dad rowed and stopped on the point he put the net he put it up on the boat. i still remember when we rowing pass the big tree the branches are hanging down we will try to took the leaf and the little fruit from the tree that was very funny moment for us we can’t stop laughing. Only thing I hate to go out with my dad is too early morning and i will miss some cartoon on the weekend. My dad snapped at us sometimes when we made the boat unstable but he never scared us with a local horror story which my mum did all the time. 

My mum said if you guys swim in the river without an adult the river ghost will pull down your legs and the kids will die and replace them, because the ghost wants to be reborn. The ghost in the river is a woman with long hair and no face dressed with white, we always have this story when someone drowns. So we are very scared of swimming in the river but we swim in our pond insanely with prawns and crabs. I don’t know which is more scary.

In my school i'm always number one of the class because i live in bangkok before and what the kids learning here so different.In this small country side school we have one teacher per one year teach every subject sometime they just asked us what we want to learn today and all of us will said drawing because no one want to study i guess that the reason why i still like drawing to help me escape from the big subject in real life. 

Every kid here has the same dream job as a teacher or doctor. I told them I want to be a model or air hostess. My sister and I will pectice a models every day. Our prawn farm is the stage where a long path of green grass and flat dry dirt is perfect for having a long walk. My mum will laugh at us and say, “Are you guys ever tired?”. I don’t know if i love my sister or not, on that time we aruring everyday my dad need to stop us sometimes but when no one in home we make a war one stutiation i remember is i use to burn my hair because i want to put the fire on my sister, she running and jump on the pond so i jump as well lucky i didn’t burn the house.

When I was 10 my dad had white hair coming and I really hate when he asks me to take it off. It the hardest job ever for me i need to sitting for an hour looking for the white hair and really need to focus with my eyes and if i take a wrong one like black hair my dad with sending the sound which it make me careful and need to be more patient. Another thing is massage by feet my dad will lay down and i need to be put my feet on his back do it over and over until he said i can stop, when was younger i don’t have to care about weight im still small i can put all weight on him but when i grew up it so hard to control my weight, my dad spoiled me to good with his food and im getting bigger. 

In my class we have around ten student 6 boys and 4 girl, one of my friend he a deaf but he never look sad or make us feel he are different, he making fun with a lot of thing no one can bullying him because he too strong and ready to fight back also he trying to speak sometime he use hand language but no one understand so mostly we communicate by pointing or acting. When I was 15 and I got home my mum told me he had passed away from fighting with someone. I was so shocked and felt very bad for him. A lot of my friends have kids, and some of them are in prison. Everything has changed every year I come back here. The thing that changes the most is people. Only thing that makes me want to come home is my family and my dad’s food.

I like to sing when i was young every house will have a big jar is bigger than elephant we have in the house at least 4 or 5 jar and a lot of small one to keep a clean water for use. When the big jar is empty I will take the stairs down and sing with my friends. I have one close friend. She really likes to come to my house because I have a lot of toys and I'm a nauthy girl. I do a lot of things that the kid here does not do. She said she is so excited every time playing with me. I don’t hear about her anymore last time i saw her is my dad funeral, she had a little lovely kids, she don’t have a boyfriends on that time she said she will find some in the future.

In my house we have our own little local rum factory. I don’t know if I can call that a factory because it all comes from local wisdom. My dad's love to drink alcohol so much, especially rum. His happiness is drinking and smoking. He makes everything on his own. He has a very big pan, big like a bathtub. and one neighbor is renting space from us. He makes rum for sale and my dad can get free rum when he comes to make it. The rum will start from simmer; the palmyra palm is a local fruit that has a black husk, and is borne in clusters. The top portion of the fruit must be cut off to reveal the sweet jelly seed sockets, translucent pale-white. This process is our favorite. We will get a sweet brown lollipop. It is very sweet but is so tasty.

Also the cittgarat paper because my dad smoke a lot so he not buying the paper but we will cut the branches from the nipa palm is actually very useful tree,nipa palm are used by local populations as roof material for thatched houses as well and yes for the cigarette paper mostly local people here will use this leaf for smoking we have it on sale at a normal local shop. When my dad run out of the paper will all gonna go to cut the leaf which in our land we have a big farm of nipa palm and just next to the house me, my sister and my friends use to play hide and seek here but not anymore after my mom to us about the ghost will kidnap the kid because they want friends. When we got a lot of branches we would cut it one by one, peel it until it got white and thin dry for a day or two and cut it in small pieces for easy use. It was a very easy way to make. 

My dad had to have a tracheostomy after he knew he got cancer and moved to bangkok. First time I heard about him getting sick I was just surprised I had never seen him sick in my entire life. I'm around 20 at that time, far away from my family. My brother grew up, he is younger than me by more than 10 year. Every year when I go back home we do not really talk too much but he admires me. He grew up with my sister. They are very close. He can play with her but never play with me.

My mom called me and told me dad needed to go to bangkok. She gave the phone to my dad to talk with me after he said hi, I started crying. My dad just gave my phone back to my mom because he doesn't want to talk with me. He doesn't want everyone to see he is sick. 

I have to go back and forth between my university and my house in Bangkok every week. I feel so tired because it takes two hour by van and the traffic is horrible. I don’t want to come to that house if my dad is not here. I won't be back again. One day when I saw my dad use the plastic funnel to put rum through the tube I don't know if he can enjoy the fact that he can’t have food by his mouth any more. 

Everything needs to go through the tube from his nose. His food is boiled fish and vegetable smoothies. We put it in a glass tube and use the glass stick slowly to make the food flow on the tube. This is so tough for him, the man who loves food and cooking the most can’t eat anymore. I still remember when i argue with him about that i don’t know how it start i try to help him put the food on the tube and he try to teach me how to do and said to him “do it yourself than” i was so sad after said that to him he look a bit angry but we still keep doing that and i say sorry after everything finish. He is the only one who feels difficult about all of this. 

My dad never makes everyone feel he is sick, he lives with full of hope and no one knows what he is thinking. He always gives me money when I need to go back to university. He will send me to the front of the house we hug and he will put the money in my hand and don’t let anyone see he gave the money to me. 

Sometimes i need to take him to cancer hospital there is pink building he to go do chemotherapy almost every week i actually very enjoy happy more than stay in this house, after chemo my dad need to stay at the hospital at least 1 or 2 night but I can’t stay over is the rule of the hospital, my dad will give me a lot of money around hospital have a lot of street food, the atmosphere in hospital is just normal im close with one nurse he always come the say hi when we there everywhere in hospital have advertisement about all of cancer i read it almost every paper and i know when they put the new one. 

I buy a book that i always want to read from the money that my dad gave me. We not really talk much i will help him sometime when he need something or want to go to toilet, I just sitting next to his bed reading my book we are so quiet my dad looking at me till he sleep when he wake up again i'm still reading, I think he happy to see me he gave me more money to buy another one i finish at least 2 book for 500 page on the time he doing chemo at hospital. My mum said why are you only reading and talking with your dad too? My mum is not here with us. She needs to take care of my sister and my brother. They still have school and my dad doesn't want to stop them. My dad looks very normal. No one would feel sick if he didn’t have a tube between his neck and his nose. And that makes me don’t realise his time is coming closer. My father said to my mum he won’t die until he sees me graduate.

On Father's Day 2014 no one with my dad, my family is gonna come to visit him soon next week. At the house in bangkok there is a Father's Day event where all of your relatives and everyone are coming to have a party. I think my dad is very happy to party again. His thing is that they are drinking, talking and playing cards. My dad loves to play it a lot. That night when I called him he told me he won a lot of money for playing cards. I said I love him. After that I hung up the phone. My sister and my brother also call him and talk to him as well, my mum said all good now she is happy every kid calls him on Father's Day. 

My dad fell on that night. His internal organs had failed, I was very worried about him but I couldn't go at 2am. After a while my aunt told me he is okay now they will take him to hospital tomorrow, I don’t understand why they don’t take him now. The early morning I took the first van, i can’t stop crying all the way my aunt call me my dad had stop breathing but the doctor do CPR and he back now im was take of the van before i arrived my destination because the trafiit and i take the motorbike to the hospital to go fast as fast as i can. My dad was asleep, he still looked good as usual. 

My father passed away 2 day after my family arrived. My mum lost control of herself. No one can stand when he stops breathing again. We all went to the hospital now he is on a ventilator. The nurse asked me and my mum to send a side document about stopping CPR on my dad because they can’t help him anymore and it better let him go. I take the document and side because my mum can’t do that. I don’t want to do that as well but someone needs to be strong for the family.

The moment when I hear the sound of the ventilator stop working, my home is gone with my dad. I don't feel any place makes me feel home anymore after he dies. My mom and my brother move back to stay with my grandmother, my house is empty and broken from no one taking care of it. And that place also stopped moving. I hear a lot of young people are moving to the city , only older local people living there and everyone has gone one by one. So when people around me said “come back home” I just answered in my mind that there is no home for me to go back to anymore.