British tourist clings to buoy in middle of Thai sea after 'going for a morning swim'

A British tourist ended up getting rescued two miles off the Thai coast after swimming out to sea and being found clinging to a buoy near the city of Pattaya.

The moment he was rescued was captured on camera by boat captain Charawat Rasrikrit, who sailed over to the buoy and found the tourist hoping to hitchhike a lift back to shore.

Fortunately the Brit was unharmed as he paddled over to Rasrikrit's boat and clambered aboard, with the sailor returning the tourist back to his beach hotel.

Rasrikrit had been sailing off the Thai coast at around 7am on 29 March when he spotted someone waving to him from the buoy.

It turned out to be a 'still drunk' Brit who'd thought it would be 'a good idea to have a morning swim' and ended up getting stranded.

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Fortunately he'd had a giant yellow buoy to cling to which kept him out of the water and made him much easier to spot by any passing boat.

When he clambered aboard the sailor's boat the young man was actually in pretty cheerful spirits as he explained that he'd swum two miles out to sea but was unfortunately too tired to make it back to shore.

The boat captain said it was lucky that he happened to be passing because the stricken tourist wouldn't have had many other opportunities to be rescued.

He said: "I went to the temple early in the morning because it was a Buddhist holy day. I drove my boat and did not expect to see tourist. He was waving at me and said he could not swim back.

"Maybe the Buddha took me to that area of the sea to help him. It was a holiday, not many boats would pass by him if I didn't come.

"I see a lot of tourists get into trouble here. I thought that maybe he had been out partying the night before and was still in a good mood in the morning. He was probably still a little bit drunk. A lot of tourists behave strangely when they come here."

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While the tourist was in a cheerful mood and made small talk with his rescuer things could have been much worse if nobody had spotted him.

They do say 'worse things happen at sea' and there have been plenty of tourists who've had a significantly worse experience.

Luckily he had a buoy to keep him out of the water while he awaited rescue, especially since there are some really nasty things in the sea which have picked on unfortunate tourists before.

Obviously getting the attention of a shark would be the worst thing, but you also wouldn't want to get beaten up by a turtle either.