A drunk British tourist sparked traffic chaos as he slept in the middle of a busy road in Pattaya.

The heavily intoxicated holidaymaker, seen in the video wearing a wet red shirt and grey shorts, reportedly collapsed on the pavement in the Thai 'Sin City' on Monday afternoon.

Concerned locals called the police at 5 pm after spotting the unconscious Englishman splayed out in front of oncoming cars.

Officers arrived at the scene, where they found him with his legs outstretched across the wet tarmac. Another tourist was telling him to sleep on the kerb but he showed no intention of moving, choosing instead lying back down on the ground.

Footage shows police dragging the man by the arms toward the sidewalk. He claimed he was from England and identified himself as 'Paul Christian'.

Onlookers said he was seen two hours earlier being escorted by two patrolmen to a condominium. When the officers left, he reportedly went on a rampage then fell asleep on the road.

Police Lieutenant Colonel Suchart Dutsadee of the Pattaya City Police Station said: 'He was a British man aged around 50. We did not record his name because there was no arrest.

‘We took him to the hospital because we thought he had an abnormality that required treatment, but we were not sure whether it was a mental illness or if he had taken drugs.

‘He was drunk, and guzzled tap water from a bucket on the side of the road before sleeping. Passersby were worried that he was unstable.'

He added the Brit was given a blanket to warm himself before being taken to a hospital.

Former fishing village Pattaya became popular with American troops on 'rest and relaxation' breaks in the 1950s and 1960s when the US military had bases in Thailand while fighting Communism in Vietnam. Rural families are said to have even dressed their sons as women to cash in on the gold rush.

The handful of bars in the coastal town quickly grew and it is now the world's biggest sex holiday destination, with round-the-clock prostitution and drugs - a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah rife with crime and debauchery.

Government chiefs have attempted to clean up the city but regular violence, depravity and claims of corruption continue to blight its reputation.