Thai lottery winner gets drunk and falls asleep in Bangkok’s overhead cables

Bangkok’s haphazard overhead cables made a comfy bed for a drunk Thai lottery winner yesterday, according to local neighbourhood watch Facebook page “Khlong Toei Land.”

Officers from Thong Lor Police Station, rescue workers, and electricity authority officials were called to the scene at the entrance of Soi Phai Singto, off the Rama 4 Road in Khlong Toei district, at around 2.40pm.

Police said they thought the man had been electrocuted to death at first because he was lying motionless tangled up in the wires. It turns out he was alive, just drunk.

Rescue workers from the Ruam Katanyu Foundation and electricity authority officials woke the drunk man and brought him safely to the ground with the help of a crane.

The man, from Maha Sarakham province in Isaan, told the police that he won the 2nd prize of 4,000 baht in the government lottery draw on Saturday with the numbers 111, which were the first three digits on his ticket.

After he realised he won the lottery, he exchanged his ticket for cash from a vendor in the Khlong Toei area before celebrating with a few drinks.

In a state of drunkenness, the lucky winner scaled a tree in the middle of the night, climbed into the cables, and fell asleep. He admitted he was still intoxicated when police woke him up at 2.40pm.

He did not reveal what compelled him to make a hammock out of the cables and spend the night asleep above the Rama 4 Road. How he didn’t fall out or get electrocuted is a mystery.

Khlong Toei Land reported that the sleepy man was in such a “good mood” from winning the lottery that he was speaking nonsense after being brought down to the ground.

Last month, a man who won the government lottery laid out 100 pig’s heads in front of the famous s 30-metre-tall Buddha statue at Wat Klang Bang Phra Temple in Nakhon Pathom province in central Thailand. He said he was fulfilling his vow to the Buddha.