Sixteen Chinese casino workers were arrested after trying to dodge a Covid-19 ban by SWIMMING into Thailand.
The exhausted lads were picked up after crossing the Moei River from neighbouring Burma on Monday (13/07) morning.
Some were wearing their clothes and others had stuffed their belongings into plastic bags.
They were all arrested in Tak province in the north of the country and taken to the police station for interrogation.
They allegedly said they had been working at a casino in Burma, or Myanmar, and were trying to find a way to return home to China.
Police Colonel Phubet Saengaram said they will try to find a way to help them but they will have to test for COVID-19 infection first.
He said: "We have not decided to charge them yet but we will work on it and in the meantime we will have them tested for the COVID-19 before contacting the Chinese embassy.
''They were exhausted because the river is powerful and in some places they were walking on a sinking base, so some of the group lost their shoes.
It was highly dangerous.'' Thailand effectively closed its borders to international tourists on March 22 and the only passenger flights into the country have been repatriation planes.
The strict measures appear to have worked, with no local transmission of the coronavirus for 50 days.
However, fears of a second wave emerged this week when an Egyptian military official tested positive for Covid-19 in Rayong province.
He had been stopping over in Thailand and visited a number of public buildings including a shopping mall.
The nine-year-old daughter of a Sudanese diplomat in Bangkok has also tested positive this week after the family arrived in the country and were allowed to self-quarantine at home instead of in state-monitored facilities.
There have been 3,227 recorded cases in Thailand, including those repatriated who picked up the disease abroad.
Hospitals have recorded 58 deaths due to the pandemic.