With the road flooded up to the level of the footpath after heavy rain, the 2.5-metre-deep excavation just north of Jungceylon was impossible to see, and the only warning was a sign saying “Reduce speed” and a flimsy barrier.
The Belorussian, Maxim Baranov, who works in a hotel in Karon, told The Phuket News, “I’d come out of a movie. It was the last showing so I came out at about 1:30 am. On my way home there were big floods so I decided to stop in front of the Family Mart.
“I was driving on the side of the road, close [to the footpath]. My front wheel suddenly went under the water and I thought, okay, maybe the water’s a bit deeper here. But then my back wheel also went and I went down too.
“I tried to get the bike out but I realised it was too deep. I stood on the bike with my hands on the handlebars but I was still underwater so I [left the bike] and some guys helped me to get out of the water.
“That was when I learned that there was another guy, a Thai guy, whose bike had sunk in the same place just five minutes before.”
He called the Tourist Police and explained what happened but after that there was a long silence with Mr Baranov calling “Hello? Hello?”
“After that they put down the phone. Then the line was busy, busy, every time I tried to call, so I called the regular police. One officer came on a motorbike, took a look and then went away again.
“It’s a rented bike so I knew I had to get it out, but at first we just waited for the water to go down. But after a while we realised it wasn’t going to go down anymore.
“So a friend called some guys who came to help. They brought a big ladder and some rope.
“I dived in the water and attached the rope to the bike. It wasn’t easy because it was completely dark down there with it being nighttime and the water full of mud.
“Then the Thai guy who lost his bike said, ‘I can’t dive or anything,’ so I thought, Okay, I’ve done it once. So I dived down and got his bike out too.
“The hole is about five metres long by three metres wide and at least two and a half meters deep.
“I went down in it and raised my hands and no one could see them above the water – I’m 180 [centimetres tall] and still I wasn’t touching the bottom, so it’s very deep. It was kinda extreme.
He added that he was concerned that others might drive into the hole. “I drove along there the day before and there was no hole there. They didn’t put any [warning] signs and also when I tried to get help they didn’t do anything. I had to do everything on my own.”
Attempts by The Phuket News to get comment from the authorities have so far failed to elicit a coherent response.
This morning the construction company that dug the hole began hurriedly to fill it in again.
Our thanks to Almas Omarov from Kazakhstan for the video. Full series of six videos here.