A Dutch tourist is facing two years in a Burmese jail after pulling the plug on a loudspeaker broadcasting Buddhist prayers because he wanted to sleep.

Klaas Haijtema, 30, has apologised profusely after being accused of disconnecting the amplifier at a religious hall in the popular tourist city of Mandalay in northern Burma, the country also known as Myanmar, late on the evening of 23 September.

“I wanted to sleep desperately. I couldn’t stand the noise and checked outside the hotel,” he said at an initial court hearing, according to the Coconuts Asia website.

“I saw that children were playing. I thought that they were playing it [sermon] and disconnected the amplifier. I did not notice that it was a religious building.”