PHUKET: Hong Kong police are looking for a Thai woman who allegedly duped another woman into becoming a drugs mule on a flight to Phuket.

Customs officials arrested Buachompoo Pattanapiyawach, 50, at Phuket International Airport with 2.5 kilos of ya ice methamphetamine with a street value of seven million baht secreted in health food snack packs.

Sunday's arrest as the Thai woman disembarked from a Dragonair flight was followed today by a media presentation in which Khun Buachompoo explained her predicament.

She lived in Bangkok and was a cancer sufferer, she said. In September last year, she was befriended by another Thai visiting Bangkok from her home in Guangzhou, a woman named ''Toy.''

At Toy's insistence, Khun Buachompoo said, she went on a trip to seek relief from her cancer at a temple in Guangzhou.

More recently, Khun Toy asked her to fly to Hong Kong and then to carry the health food snacks to Phuket and on to Bangkok to give to relatives, Khun Buachompoo.

Khun Buachompoo could recollect little about Khun Toy, apart from her name.

The Director of Customs Region 4, Prayut Maneechote, said today that the amount of drugs being detected at Thailand's airports was up by 30 percent this year.

''Once we were especially wary of travel from Doha but now the emphasis has switched to China,'' he said.

He warned Thai women to be especially careful of people who presented themselves as friends and asked them to carry items on flights.