Chinese tourist found, claims life-insurance threat

Gao Li Ping, 36, left the zoo on her own on Sunday without telling anyone.
Authorities located the tourist after receiving a tip-off from a local resident in Chon Buri’s Sri Racha district.
“I found a stranger washing her clothes opposite my house. When I approached her, I found out that she could speak only Chinese. I immediately thought about the news reports about a missing Chinese tourist,” Sutas Sriwattana, 54, said yesterday.
A tour guide led Gao and 36 other tourists around the Sriracha Tiger Zoo on Sunday. Gao was the only member of the group who did not return to the tour bus, prompting a frantic search with hundreds of officials searching the vicinity.
 The incident was in the media spotlight amid speculation that she might have committed suicide at the zoo. The hut where Gao was found is about 500 metres away.
Officials said Gao was very distraught and apparently frightened of going home.
“She said she ran away from the tour group because she didn’t want to return to China,” Sriracha district chief Worayarn Bunnaraj said yesterday.
Gao was under stress over family problems, he said, adding that she had said she had been forced to take out a life insurance policy by a person who was then named as the beneficiary in the event of her death.
“She said the death compensation would be worth millions of baht,” Worayarn said.
Speaking via an interpreter, Gao said she sneaked out of the zoo through a barbed wire fence but got lost in a nearby forest, where she wandered for almost two days.
She added that when she noticed the hut, she decided to wash her clothes there but met Sutas instead.
“I heard that she had not eaten anything during the past two days,” Worayarn said, adding that she was unharmed but tired.
The tourist was sent yesterday to a hospital for a check-up and tourist police are in the process of contacting the Chinese embassy.
Tour guide Jingya Sae Jao earlier said that Gao had been alone before she joined the tour group and did not talk to anyone during the trip.
“She looked so vacant and unhappy,” he said.