Saturday September 6 12:06 PM EDT World Mourns Diana, Hails Good Works, Humanity By Colin McIntyre LONDON (Reuter) - Hundreds of millions of people worldwide joined with Britons on Saturday to bid farewell to Princess Diana, celebrating her unique mixture of glamor and campaigning zeal as she coped with problems faced by women everwhere. From ordinary housewives in Thailand to AIDS sufferers in the United States and landmine victims in Bosnia, people watched a broadcast of Diana's funeral in what was likely to be one of the largest live television audiences in history. Illustrating her reach across international, cultural and social borders, yachts in "millionaires' piers" on the French Riveria lowered flags to half mast as ordinary people everywhere left flowers and tributes to "the people's princess." The funeral broadcast was going out to 60 countries, with an estimated audience of 2.5 billion people, and radio reports were transmitted in at least 44 languages. As millions of people converged on London to witness Diana's final journey, others around the world remembered her in their own way, from candlelit vigils in the U.S. to a traditional wake on the South Sea island of Tonga. In Poland, where the funeral was broadcast live, a prominent socialogist, Professor Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, said: "For years many people have got to know Diana better than their own neighbours or colleagues. "She was different from most average people because she attended fancy balls, travelled aboard yachts and belonged to the upper class. But she was also the same as us because she too had problems with her husband, her mother-in-law and herself with which she had to cope. For many women she became a model of how to cope. "In a world devoid of values and ideals, she filled a void. The reaction to her death shows how much people are seeking values and role models." In violence-torn Northern Ireland, Diana's death has succeeded in uniting warring pro-Irish Catholics and pro-British Protestants, however briefly, in mutual admiration for her humanitarian work. As British-ruled Northen Ireland came to a standstill for her funeral, with shops and offices closed and sporting fixtures postponed, the neighbouring Republic of Ireland paid her a signal honour. Flags flew at half mast from public buildings, the first such gesture for a British national since the outlawed Irish Republican Army assassinated Lord Mountbatten, the former viceroy of India, while he holidayed in County Sligo in 1979. In San Francisco, some 14,000 people marched through the city in a candelight procession on Friday night to pay tribute to Diana, particularly her work on behalf of AIDS patients. Most walked in silence until the end of the march where they were greeted by a recording of Elton John's "Candle in the Wind." John sang a version of the song, with new words, at Diana's funeral. Cleve Jones, creator of the AIDS memorial quilt which remembers tens of thousands of AIDS victims, said San Franciscans had a special place in their hearts for Diana, killed in a car crash in Paris last Sunday. "We who are living with HIV and AIDS especially remember Diana's courage during the darkest days of the epidemic when her country and our own were swept by bigotry, hatred and hysteria...," Jones told the crowd. "It was then that Diana visited a hospice and with ungloved hands embraced a gay man dying of AIDS. That image of simple compassion flashed across the world and changed the way the world saw AIDS." Bosnian landmine victims joined in the mourning, saying Diana's humanitarian visit to their country last month had helped focus attention on the suffering caused by mines. "I feel as if someone from my own family has died. I miss her very much," said Predrag Minov, 40, a mine victim who met Diana last month. Other landmine victims in Angola also joined in the mourning, saying they wished their government had given them as much care as Diana had shown when she began an anti-mine crusade there in January. Many of the victims she visited at a prosthesis centre in the capital Luanda were unable to watch her funeral on television because of an electricity black-out in parts of the city. Among the million of people across the world tuning in to the funeral was a housewife in Thailand who called Diana "the most loved princess in the world." In Tonga, itself a monarchy, a group of Diana's devotees planned a traditional wake, or pongipongi, after the funeral. "Diana was a very kind princess who helped poor people in all the nations, poor people like us in Tonga," said wake organizer and songwriter Kilisimasi Mounga. In Paris, locals and tourists laid bouquets, candles and messages near the mouth of the road tunnel where she died. "Goodbye to the real Queen of England," read one in English.