A 62-year-old farmer was rescued after getting stuck at the bottom of a 33ft-deep well.

Thawin Ketwong, 62, climbed down the narrow shaft and spent half an hour tinkering with the pump motor below in Ang Thong province, Thailand, on September 13.

When the old man finished the repair, he clambered up the ladder, felt lightheaded halfway through, and fell on his back as he ran out of oxygen.

Struggling to breathe, he mustered to take his phone from his pocket and called his wife for help, who took the rescuers to the well and began the operation.

Worried wife Sunee Ketwong, 62, said: ‘He left the house to work on the farm. I knew he was going to fix something on the well. He told me he needed help, so I rushed to call the rescuers.'

The elderly farmer used bamboo stairs to climb down the well he built to collect water for irrigation. However, the pump at the bottom broke, so he had to replace some of its parts.

He fixed the pump but did not realise he had been suffocating from the thin oxygen at the bottom of the deep wall and almost passed out when he climbed up the ladder

Upon hitting his back on the ground, he could barely move and reached through his pocket to call his wife.

She arrived at the scene with local rescuers. They built a pulley by tying a rope on a nearby tree next to the hole.

A volunteer descended to the bottom with an oxygen tank and strapped the old man on the pulley before he was pulled up.

The team took Thawin to the hospital with his wife as the ordeal left him too weak. He was confined for one night as doctors monitored his condition, but he was generally fine.