Cycling billionaire loses face-off with monitor lizard

Cycling billionaire loses face-off with monitor lizard

Areeyachat Apisithamorngul, aka Jaeleng, in a hospital bed with a swollen face and gauze bandage, after her confrontation with a monitor lizard while cycling in Lumpini park on Sunday.
Areeyachat Apisithamorngul, aka Jaeleng, in a hospital bed with a swollen face and gauze bandage, after her confrontation with a monitor lizard while cycling in Lumpini park on Sunday.

Billionaire Areeyachat Apisithamorngul, aka Jaeleng, came off worst in a confrontation with a big monitor lizard during her daily cycling exercise in Lumpini public park on Sunday morning.

Jaeleng posted on her Facebook page, Jaeleng Lapshewasitthichards, on Sunday that she cycled around the park in downtown Bangkok every morning.

On Sunday, at a bend in the track, she came across a monitor lizard blocking the way in front of her.  The lizard was about 1.50 metres long and 50 centimetres in girth.

She stopped and waited for the lizard to continue across the track, but it just stayed there, repeatedly flicking its long tongue in and out.

As the lizard would not move, Jaeleng wrote, she started to pedal around it - and that was when it darted at her bicycle. She hit and ran over the lizard, which reciprocated by swiping her bike with its tail.

Jaeleng, 71, said she and the bike fell over and her face hit the track - hard.

She posted a picture of herself in a hospital bed, her face swollen and with a gauze bandage covering her cheek.

Jaeleng runs a shopping mall called Jae Leng Plaza, which sells imported products at discounted prices, near Don Mueang airport.

She is reported to be worth billions of baht.

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