- Dangerous as the situation was, this sure makes for one heck of a travel story.
Thailand was a very popular tourist destination before the pandemic and is slowly but surely bouncing back. It’s no wonder, either.
There’s plenty to see in Thailand. The country is famous for its pristine beaches, gorgeous jungles, and some… Let’s just say less-than-savory activities.
Recently, though, one American tourist saw Thailand from a perspective few get to witness.
He fell into a sewer.
Johnathan Ioane Vaimaona was on vacation in the city of Pattaya in southern Thailand when he somehow — we’re not sure how — fell through a manhole. With no one around to hear his cries for help, Vaimaona found himself trapped.
He wandered the sewers for hours until someone finally heard him yelling from the underground. Rescuers and cops pulled the filthy and confused Vaimaona out of the tunnels, luckily unharmed.
However, upon questioning, it became clear the 36-year-old may have partaken in some of Pattaya’s seedier entertainment options. For example, the man claimed to be the leader of Cambodia’s sports teams.
Police say they have now launched an investigation into who Vaimaona actually is and how he ended up in the sewer. But hey, at least he got out.
An Unfortunate Fall
Vaimaona’s ordeal began on May 12. At the time, he was — or at least claims he was — returning to a hotel where he had booked a room with his girlfriend.
Suddenly, as he was walking along, the street disappeared from beneath his feet. Vaimaona stated that he stepped onto an uncovered manhole and plummeted into the dank tunnels below.
Luckily for him, he seems to have landed on his feet and didn’t break anything in the fall. Perhaps the piles of filth in the sewer conveniently cushioned his fall.
On the downside, though, he was now trapped 10 feet underground with no way to climb back out. Vaimaona did the one thing any reasonable person would’ve done in the situation — he started yelling for help.
But no one appeared to hear him. After yelling for a while, he decided to start looking for another manhole.
Perhaps he could find a ladder he could use to climb out.
Here’s the thing, though — if you don’t have a map and know exactly where you’re going, it’s very easy to get lost in a sewer system. And that’s just what happened to Vaimaona.
He walked around for a period that he later said “felt like days.” In reality, he was underground for approximately four hours, but we can’t blame him for getting confused.
‘I Saw a Man in the Drain’
As he wandered the sewers, Vaimaona kept calling for help whenever he passed something that looked like an opening. Eventually, he lucked out.
Security guard Chalee Boonsri, 26, was the one to hear Vaimaona’s cries.
“I was on my way to a convenience store for a drink when I suddenly heard a foreigner shouting. I looked around but didn’t see anyone there,” Boonsri told Newsflare.
“But when I looked at the pavement, I saw a man peeking at me from the drain.”
Boonsri got Vaimaona to stay put and called for help. Soon enough, rescuers arrived and — with the help of Boonsri and other locals — lifted the heavy drain grate.
Finally, Vaimaona got out of his prison. The heavily tattooed, filth-encrusted man must’ve been quite a sight as he emerged from the sewer.
The rescue workers hosed him down to clean most of the crap off of him and gave him a drink of water. And then they probably got very confused as Vaimaona began to tell his story.
Who, Where, What?
Vaimaona told his rescuers that he was from Hawaii. However, there was something clearly off with the man.
He couldn’t remember which hotel he was staying at. He only told the police that it was “the one with the boats.”
Vaimaona also couldn’t recall how exactly he ended up in the sewer.
“I just fell down a hole, and I didn’t know where I was going,” he said.
The confused man also didn’t seem to know where he was. He did, however, claim that he was “the head of athletes from Cambodia.”
Understandably, the cops couldn’t make heads or tails of his slurred story. The details he gave about himself didn’t match his visa and travel documents, so they found it prudent to keep Vaimaona under surveillance until he got his thoughts straight.
We couldn’t find out whether Vaimaona has been released. Neither could we discover whether he was under the influence, or whether his confusion was due to dehydration or hitting his head in the fall.
We sure hope he’s recovered, though — and that he’ll pay close attention to where he steps in the future.
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