Australian beauty Angela MacKay has handed back her Miss Thailand crown just 10 days after winning it, saying her entirely unexpected triumph interfered with her modelling career.

　　"I really went into the competition because I just wanted to learn how to speak Thai and I wanted to have a Thai experience," said the 21-year-old from Perth with an Australian father and a Thai mother.

　　"I wanted to just learn about Thai culture. I honestly didn't expect to win at all. It was a very, very big surprise to me," she said before heading back to New York late on Tuesday to go back to modelling.

　　MacKay said she had been persuaded to enter by relatives in Thailand when she came for a visit and hadn't realised that the title required her to stay in the country for the coming year.

　　She returned the prize money of 1 million baht (13,500 pounds), a diamond crown worth 800,000 baht and a car.

　　Thailand will send second placed Sirinda Jensen to the Miss World contest in China in December. Jensen is half Thai and half Dutch.