29th October 2026 – (Chiang Mai) A 27-year-old woman from Guangzhou has lost contact after flying to Thailand to meet a male online friend in Chiang Mai — a trip framed around an exchange of gifts, including his promise of a new iPhone 18 — as mainland police open an inquiry and her family prepares to seek help on the ground.
The woman surnamed Fu left Guangzhou by air for Bangkok on 23rd October, intending to continue to Chiang Mai for the meetup, according to her friends’ account of the trip. After she reached Chiang Mai she stopped answering family and friends.
Her friend, Mr Zhou, said the man online had agreed to give her an iPhone 18. Ms Fu, for her part, had handmade a present to take to Thailand for the swap. The pair had built the plan around that mutual exchange before she boarded the flight.
Friends had tried to talk her out of going alone. Mr Zhou said the warnings failed. She kept to the original schedule and flew out as arranged. Those close to her only grasped how serious the silence was once calls and messages from Chiang Mai went unanswered.
By 27th October, people familiar with the matter said police in China had stepped in. Relatives were also planning to travel to Thailand to ask local officers for assistance in finding her. No public update has yet named the online acquaintance or said whether Thai police have opened a parallel file.
Solo travel to meet someone known only through chat remains a familiar risk story across the region. Gift promises — even something as flashy as the latest iPhone — can lower a traveller’s guard. In this case, the handmade present and the phone pledge sit beside a simple, bleak fact: a young woman from Guangzhou arrived in Chiang Mai and then vanished from her circle’s contact list.