CHIANG MAI: People in Northern Thailand have been afraid to answer their cellphones in recent weeks, following claims that calls from certain numbers cause instant brain haemorrhages.

People are warning each other to watch out for numbers containing the sequence 3333. If the gossip is to be believed, when calls from the numbers are answered the phones send out a high frequency signal causing blood to explode out of the ear.

The deadly phone calls have reportedly been restricted to the North with reports from Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Lampang, Phayao, Phrae and Nan.

On January 21 Kanchana Khayan, a fourth-year student at Chiang Mai Rajabhat University, told reporters that her mother had warned her never to answer calls from a number starting with 083-333 and ending with 67.

A Tourist Police officer, who asked not to be named, said the death calls are all people are talking about in certain districts of Chiang Mai.

In Phrae, the phone calls are rumoured to have killed more than 40 people.

Amnuay Na Lampang, Deputy Superintendent of Song Men Police, said he asked his officers to investigate stories of people in his district dying after answering the phone. The officers could find no evidence of telephone-related fatalities, however.

Lt Col Amnuay said he believed the news had been spread after friends and relatives in Chiang Mai had called up warning people to be on their guard.

Thanom Buaphat, from the Northern Telecommunications Center, said the suspicious numbers belonged to telecoms company AIS’s Northeastern zone.

Mr Thanom said he had heard news of mobile phones causing people to crash their cars or giving them brain tumors, but never causing instant death.

“The stories were probably just made up by youths for a laugh,” he said.

Assistant Director of AIS's public relations department, Wilai Khiangpradu, said the news wasn’t true as mobile phones could not emit signals of high enough frequency to be a health risk.

Finally, after collecting evidence from across the North, the Khao Sod news team plucked up the courage to try one of the deadly numbers themselves.

The reporters called 083-333-5xxx, reportedly one of the most  dangerous numbers.

Instead of an explosion of blood from the ear, however, they got an angry young woman who complained she had been called more than 100 times that day by people asking if she had really been sending out high frequency death waves.

The woman said she had been using the ‘beautiful number’ since she bought it three years ago. The following day she would buy a new SIM card, she added.

PHETCHABURI: A pensioner died on stage after choking on a clump of noodles while participating in a pad thai eating contest.

Until his collapse, sixty-six-year-old Hing Laichan was leading the competition on his second plate of the famous fried noodle dish, nationalistically named by prime minister Field Marshal Plaek Pibulsonggram during the World War II era.

Onlookers took Mr Hing down from the stage and rushed him to hospital, but doctors were unable to save him. An autopsy found noodles stuck in his throat.

The competition was part of a Phetchaburi Provincial Administration Organization fair held in Tha Yang District on January 15.

Mr Hing’s wife, Uraiwan Iamla-ong, said her husband was in very good health. She that when Mr Hing said he was going to the fair in search of prizes, she never thought he would end up dying in a pad thai eating contest.

Phayao Laichan, the victim’s daughter, said that witnesses told her her father was just about to win the contest when he keeled over.

He must have not chewed properly before swallowing, causing the food to stick in his throat, Mrs Phayao speculated.

She hopes her father’s death will serve as a warning to other agencies planning to hold similar competitions, she said.

The family said they are treating the death as an accident and do not intend to take legal action against the event organizers.

NAKHON SRI THAMMARAT: A would-be rapist got his comeuppance on January 7, when he climbed naked through the wrong window and met his intended victim’s mother – meat cleaver in hand.

Twenty-eight-year-old villager Phongphetch Bunyadisak climbed through the window of a home in his village in Muang District, allegedly after the prize-winning teenage schoolgirl who lived there.

When he crawled under the mosquito net on the ground floor however, he found not the young girl he had hoped for but her 52-year-old mother, Phimphimon Phetchcharoen.

Mrs Phimphimon said she was awaken around 11:30pm to find a naked and extremely drunk Mr Phongphetch trying to fondle her. She managed to fight him off, get up and grab a cleaver. Mr Phongphetch made a wild dash for the window, but not before Mrs Phimphimon landed two blows on his back and head.

Mrs Phimphimon shouted for help from neighbors. The villagers called the police then formed a posse to hunt down Mr Phongphetch. At first the villagers could find only Mr Phongphetch jeans, abandoned outside Mrs Phimphimon’s window along with an empty bottle of lao khao (cheap clear spirits).

Police investigators noticed a trail of blood leading from the window into woods behind the house. At the end of the blood trail they found Mr Phongphetch, still naked and curled up in the fetal position.

Officers took the suspect to Maharaj Hospital to have his wounds stitched up and then to Muang District Police Station for questioning. Mr Phongphetch, however, was too drunk to give a coherent statement.

Mrs Phimphimon said this was the third time Mr Phongphetch had tried to sneak into her house, but the previous times she had woken up and scared him off before he managed to enter.

Mr Phongphetch is an unemployed drug addict who is always stealing from other villagers, she said. He also has a bad temper and frequently assaults people, even monks, Mrs Phimphimon alleged.

He was recently released from prison after serving time for the attempted murder of his own mother, she added.

Deputy Inspector Charin Khao-iam of the Muang District Police said the villagers are all thoroughly fed up with Mr Phongphetch’s behavior.

It was good luck that Mr Phongphetch got the wrong person and felt the sharp end of Mrs Phimphimon’s cleaver, he said.

AYUDHAYA: Tourists have been flocking to a temple in the old capital district to get close to a group of tame frogs that have taken up residence in a lotus pond.

The frogs sit happily on lotus leaves, allowing tourists to stroke and play with them. They even allow photos to be taken, free-of-charge.

Phrakhrupradit Kijjarak, 46, the abbot of Wat Rachpraditthan in Phra Nakhon Sri Ayudhaya District, said the temple's frog community started out with two baby golden frogs that appeared in the lotus pond around the end of Buddhist lent in October. As the frogs grew, more and more of the little amphibians came to live in the pool. By the time news of the tame frogs broke on December 22, there were nine of them living in the pool.

Monks began to feed the frogs fish food. Soon, the frogs became used to the rhythms of temple life and whenever people played music the frogs would come and sit on the edge of the pond to listen and croak along, Phrakhrupradit said.

When monks come to feed them, they sit patiently on the lotus leaves to wait for their fish pellets. The abbot added that he thought the frogs had felt safe and happy in the temple pond and so invited their friends to come and live there too. Now it is as if the frogs are temple students, Phrakhrupradit said.

The day after the story of the frogs was published in the Thai press, around 500 tourists came to pet the animals. Word seems to have reached Ayudhaya’s amphibian community as well: the following day the flock of frogs had grown to 12.

Surapha Prachusap, a teacher from Lopburi who brought her students to see the frogs, said they were incredibly tame. Mrs Surapha added that she believes the frogs feel happy and content as Thai temples are known for providing shelter to animals.

Phrakhrupradit said if the number of frogs keeps growing, the temple will have to extend the lotus pond so they will all have room to live.

ANG THONG: A funeral was called to an abrupt halt on December 12 after mourners opened the coffin just before the cremation was to begin and realized they were about to burn the wrong corpse.

The funeral was ostensibly for 39-year-old Prachuap Arachon, found dead of apparent heart failure in Chachoengsao at the end of October.

Finding Mr Prajuap’s ID card on the body, Chachoengsao Police managed to track down who they thought were the dead man’s relatives in Ang Thong and arrange for the body to be returned home.

Khomkrit Khrongton, who helped raise the orphaned Mr Prachuap, agreed to host the funeral as Mr Prachuap’s true relatives are very poor.

Mr Khomkrit arranged the funeral to be held at Wat Chang in Ang Thong’s Wiset Chai Chan District. The service began on December 11 with prayers for the deceased. The cremation was scheduled for the following day.

When they opened the coffin before the cremation, however, they found that the body inside was certainly not that of Mr Prachuap.

Wichit Iamsamang, a former village chief and Mr Prachuap’s stepfather, said that Mr Prachuap didn’t visit his home village very often.

“I'm fairly sure the body in the coffin isn’t Mr Prachuap. It doesn't look like him at all,” Mr Wichit said after seeing the body.

“We decided to stop the cremation, as it's against the law [to cremate an unknown body without permission]. We’ll have to try and find out whose body it actually is. We will contact Chachoengsao Police and the rescue foundation that brought us the body. We’re also going to try and find Mr Prachuap to make sure he is still alive,” he added.

After contacting police, it emerged that in September Mr Prachuap reported to police that he had lost his national ID card.

Relatives then rang friends and acquaintances of Mr Prachuap and soon found someone who confirmed that they had seen Mr Prachuap a couple of days earlier – and he was very much still alive.

Mr Khomkrit said that the funeral arrangements had cost him 32,555 baht.

The corpse of the unknown man will eventually be cremated as a pauper if his identity cannot be confirmed or his relatives contacted.

Friends and relatives did not explain why no-one had thought to positively identify the body before the funeral.