Former Philippine Airlines pilot found homeless in Bangkok

A former Philippine Airlines and AirAsia pilot, who reportedly lost all his savings in bad choices on the stock market, divorced his Thai wife and became homeless on the streets of Bangkok, has been rescued by the Mirror Foundation and taken to a hospital for treatment of his diabetes.

Sittiphol Chuprajong, head of the homeless people project of the Mirror Foundation, said that he learned about the condition of the Filipino man, who was later identified as Larry Malpaya, and decided to help.

He reports that he is coordinating with the Philippine Embassy about how to deal with the case, including whether to have him returned to the Philippines, adding that the man has to recover first.

The riches-to-rags tale of Larry Malpaya was disclosed by a Facebook user, known as ‘gugbyusmodeling’, who claimed in his post on Wednesday that he found the homeless man at about 1am on Tuesday lying on the cement under the staircase of the BTS Ploenchit station with some infected wounds on his body.

He then asked a security guard in front of the Q House building about the homeless man and was told that he had been taking refuge there since Monday. The guard claimed that he had contacted a few organisations seeking help, adding that some men came to see him and offered to take him to a hospital, but the man declined claiming he could not afford the medical bills.

The netizen said he decided to approach the homeless man and ask whether he needed help. The man took out 120 baht from his wallet and asked him to buy some medicine from a nearby convenience store to treat his wounds.

He went on to say that he told the homeless man to keep his money and offered to buy the medicine, a bottle of drinking water and a loaf of bread for him. He said he asked the man’s name and then checked details of him via Google, which showed the image of a Philippine Airlines pilot.

Gug recalled that, when he showed the image of the pilot to Larry, asking whether he was the same man, the man then broke into tears. Both had a long conversation and it was discovered that the Larry used to have a Thai wife in Pathum Thani, but they divorced several years ago, and that he has been living in Thailand for more than 20 years.

Further checks on social media confirmed Larry’s records of share trading activities.