‘My dad and I were by her side’: Actress Hong Ling’s mother dies at 52

SINGAPORE – Local actress Hong Ling’s Thai mother Kaewsoda Kesorn died on Feb 23 at the age of 52.

It was first disclosed by Hong’s husband, local actor Nick Teo, who posted an obituary on Instagram Stories on Feb 24.

“My mother-in-law passed away yesterday,” he wrote. “The wake will be held this afternoon onwards.”

According to the obituary, the wake will be held on Feb 24 from 1pm, with the cortege leaving on Feb 27 at 10am. The location of the wake is not stated in the post.

Hong’s manager told Chinese-language daily Lianhe Zaobao on Feb 24 that her mother was diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer in May 2024.

Hong, 30, and her parents were interviewed by Zaobao in 2019.

Her Singaporean father Hong Yishu revealed that he got to know Madam Kaewsoda when he went to Bangkok, Thailand, for reservist training for three weeks in 1990. She was working in the military camp at that time, and Mr Hong said it was love at first sight.

He began to learn Thai by himself after he returned to Singapore, and later flew to Thailand to look for Madam Kaewsoda.

Hong Ling posted five black-and-white photos on Instagram on Feb 24 at about noon.

They showed Hong and her mother holding a bouquet of flowers on a yacht, and her parents kissing her at her 2023 wedding to Teo, 35. Other photos showed Hong with her mother who was lying on a hospital bed, looking out of the window together, and at her mother’s wake with Teo.

“My beautiful and loving mummy, she is a Thai, and when she came to Singapore, she knew nothing – not the language, not the culture,” Hong wrote in the post about her mother’s love.

“Afraid that I would be laughed at by my classmates for speaking Thai, she forced herself to learn Chinese from scratch, just so she could help me fit in.”

Hong said her mother would be in the kitchen cooking her favourite Thai dishes every time she came home.

“Even in her final days, after chemotherapy had drained her, she still cooked for the whole family, worried that we wouldn’t get to eat her home-cooked meals anymore,” Hong wrote. “It was as if she was trying to give us one last piece of her, knowing her time was running out.”

Hong, who will star in Mediacorp’s upcoming series The Spirit Hunter, said her mother always prioritised family. Hong has a younger sister and a younger brother.

“Whenever I was away filming, no matter how much she missed me, she never called. She was afraid of disturbing me. That was the kind of mother she was – always putting us first, never herself,” the actress wrote.

“She was still so young. She spent her entire life caring for us, only starting to pursue her own happiness three years ago – gardening, practising taiji, hiking. But just as she began to live for herself, she was taken away.”

Hong said she and her father were by her mother’s side when she died. “We will see her again. Soon,” she wrote.