Пьяная драка бирманских строителей на стройплощадке в Паттайе

A boozy bust-up between two Burmese builders turned into a blood-soaked machete brawl at a luxury housing estate in Pattaya, leaving one man with a gaping head wound and the other under arrest.

The late-night violence erupted just before midnight on July 1 at a high-end property under renovation on Thung Klom-Tan Man Road in Nong Prue.

Rescue teams and police, led by Lieutenant Colonel Surachai Chuaykoon of Nong Prue Police Station, arrived to find 39 year old Kyaw Tar Sein staggering and drenched in blood, with a 10-centimetre gash carved into his scalp.

The injured man, unable to speak Thai, pointed frantically at a nearby construction site and muttered Ya Khai, a Burmese term believed to refer to his attacker, while gesturing toward another worker's hut.

Staff at a nearby minimart said Kyaw Tar Sein had run into their store clutching his bleeding head and pleading for help. CCTV footage captured four fellow workers later trying to drag him back to the site, before the employee stepped in and called police.

Officers followed the trail of blood back to a worker's dorm and found the suspect, 51 year old Kyaw, lounging on a mattress with cuts under his left armpit and bruises to his face. A bloodied machete was recovered from the room.

Both men, believed to be drinking cheap white liquor earlier in the evening, gave wildly different accounts of what sparked the machete mayhem.

Kyaw claimed he was set upon first after refusing to hand over 2,300 baht, saying he reminded his co-worker he'd been feeding him for weeks. But Kyaw Tar Sein insisted he was attacked without warning during the row.

Their supervisor, a 30 year old man named New, told police the pair had been working at the site for around a month and had clashed over money while drinking.

We're not going to intervene, he said. We've asked police to take legal action, we don't want more violence.

Kyaw was detained for questioning at Nong Pprue Police Station, while the injured man was rushed to hospital for treatment. Pattaya News reported that the case remains under investigation.