CHIANG RAI: A missing 22-year-old Malaysian woman went to a river pier on the border with Myanmar in Mae Sai district before her worried family lost contact with her, according to official sources.
The sources said Chong Sum Yee aka Angie checked in to a hotel near the Mae Sai border checkpoint on May 29.
The following day she rode on a motorcycle towards the border in tambon Koh Chang of Mae Sai, where the Ruak River delineates the frontier, with Tachilek township in Myanmar on the other side.
The young tourist was seen in surveillance camera footage sitting in the lobby of the hotel. A white-clad woman greeted her in a friendly manner and they both then walked out of the hotel.
She was seen riding pillion on a motorcycle towards the border in tambon Koh Chang.
Officials had found the motorcyclist, who said that Angie paid her 500 baht to go to a border pier in tambon Koh Chang. She did not know if the Malaysian woman crossed the border.
The signal from the missing woman's mobile phone disappeared at the border in tambon Koh Chang. Thai officials said she might have entered Myanmar using an unofficial border crossing point.
Thai officials have asked their counterparts in Myanmar to look for the missing woman. They were awaiting an official complaint from her family.
The missing woman's mother, known as Caiyun, has arrived in Thailand from Kuala Lumpur. She was in Mae Sai district on Wednesday and filed a missing person complaint with tourist police there.
Ms Caiyun said her family had a cosmetics business. She had lost contact with Angie after her daughter arrived in Chiang Mai. She feared her daughter had been lured across the border into Myanmar.
She told police there was a message on her daughter's LINE chat account, telling her that she need not be worried. Ms Caiyun doubted that her daughter sent that message, because there had been nothing from her since.
Ms Caiyun was staying in Mae Sai with her interpreter, waiting for information about her daughter.