A Thai man has gone viral after being rejected for mandatory military service due to obesity, the result of a deliberate bubble tea binge.
A TikTok video posted by @mon_witchaphon, a soldier at a conscription screening centre in Chachoengsao on April 3, showed the unidentified man being turned away after failing the body mass index (BMI) threshold.
“While others slim down, this one chose to bulk up,” the caption beneath the video said.
The man told the officer he had drunk two cups of bubble tea a day for three months. He gained 30 kilogrammes to push his BMI above the disqualifying threshold of 35, a level classified as obese and grounds for automatic rejection.
When asked by the officer whether he planned to lose the weight, he replied that he would, starting that evening.
Under Thai law, a man who fails the physical threshold is exempt from the draft lottery draw.
The video drew hundreds of comments. One commenter wrote that he had once weighed 135kg and had since dropped to 110kg, adding that losing the weight had proved far harder than gaining it.
Another warned: “Two years as a soldier, but diabetes for life.”
