Southern Thai man strikes gold with rare cobra encounter

A rare golden cobra slithered into a rubber plantation in Satun province in southern Thailand on Thursday.

Sitthinai Soisuwan was walking in the rubber plantation behind his house in Satun province when he spotted an unusual golden snake. Sitthinai said the snake flared its hood and threatened him.

Captivated by its beauty, Sitthinai didn’t think about the snake’s potentially deadly venom and wrangled the snake, put it in a sack, and carried it home. He said he planned on raising the golden snake as a pet.

When Sitthinai posted photos of the one-metre-long golden snake on Facebook, commenters warned him to release it immediately.

Netizens told Sitthinai that he was dealing with a highly venomous spitting Sumatran cobra.

Not only is it a deadly venomous snake, but like a Siamese spitting cobra, it can spit venom at targets with great accuracy.

At first, several people who believed the golden snake would bring good luck asked Sitthinai if they could come to his house to take a look at the rare spectacle.

However, once Sitthinai realised the deadly potential of the snake he’d wrangled with his bare hands, he was no longer interested in raising it as a pet.

He decided it would be better for everyone’s safety if the snake was released, so he took it somewhere far away and let it back into the wild.

Anyone who was looking for a lottery ticket might be interested in Sitthinai’s house number – 157.

The Equatorial spitting cobra (Naja sumatrana), aka Sumatran cobra, is a species of spitting cobra that can be black or gold. The species can be found in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines.

In September, a villager in Trang province – just up the road from Satun – woke up in the morning to find a 2.1 metre long king cobra taking a nap inside his wardrobe.

In November, a Thai man narrowly survived a bite from his pet monocled cobra.

If you got bitten by a venomous snake in Thailand, would you know what to do to survive?

Don’t worry, just read The Thaiger‘s 3-minute guide ‘What to do if you get bitten by a snake in Thailand.’