Chinese guest, 32, found dead in hotel fall just three days after American tourist
A Chinese tourist was found dead in a hotel in Thailand fall just three days after an American man.
Ronggui Chen, 32, was drinking beer in his room when he reportedly plunged from the balcony of the LK Crystal Ville Hotel in Pattaya in the early hours of today.
Staff were shocked by a loud shattering noise near the entrance before discovering the Chinese guest draped on a steel beam on the building's porch.
Police rushed to the scene at 3:36 am local time, where they found the holidaymaker wearing only boxer shorts as he hung on a ceiling rafter.
He had crashed through the glass panels, scattering shards as his blood poured onto the steps below.
Officers inspected his sixth-floor room and found one of his friends still asleep. The nearby table was littered with empty alcohol bottles, snack bags, and takeaway food containers.
Police Major Alis Phuangsawai of Pattaya City Police Station said no signs of a fight were discovered.
He added: 'The deceased had checked into the hotel with his group of friends occupying several rooms, and it was their second night at the hotel. He was staying in room 3607 with a male friend of the same nationality. The cause of the fall remains unknown.'
Ronggui's body was collected and taken to Pattaya Bhattamakun Hospital before being transferred to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Bangkok for a post-mortem examination.'
Authorities said his roommate, the last person to see him alive, will be interrogated.
Just three days earlier, American tourist Timothy Tahei Witsil, 50, from Florida, was found dead on a sixth-floor balcony at a different hotel in Pattaya.
Passers-by spotted the motionless tourist slumped over the railing and alerted police, who arrived at around 1 am and found no signs of assault or disturbance inside his room.
Officers said the American holidaymaker is believed to have died more than three hours before he was discovered, with the exact cause of death pending a post-mortem examination.
The deaths are the latest in a string of foreigners who have died mysteriously in Pattaya.
An investigation by British publisher The Sun found that suicide in the city is five times the national average.
Former fishing village Pattaya became popular with American troops on 'rest and relaxation' breaks in the 1950s and 1960s when the U.S. military had bases in Thailand while fighting Communism in Vietnam. Rural families are said to have even dressed their sons as women to cash in on the gold rush.
The handful of bars in the coastal town quickly grew and it is now the world's biggest sex holiday destination, with round-the-clock prostitution and drugs - a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah rife with crime and debauchery.
Government chiefs have attempted to clean up the city but regular violence, depravity and claims of corruption continue to blight its reputation.
