Tuesday, January 27th, 2004 – Day 343
I was up at 7.00am and took a moto to the Thailand border. Its a fixed OTT rate of 50 baht. Again, I have to pass the cambo border officials. Again they take for ever looking at passports and it takes 10 guts to look at one. They found my visa irregular as I entered the country at a new crossing called o Smach. They were questioning an American like a criminal when I was there. Again the Thais are efficient.
I had to wait 40 minutes before a mini bus to Trat was leaving. It took one hour and I was there by 10..30am. From there, you can get a bus to Bangkok for 147 Baht. It took 6.5 hours. I as there at 5.00pm. I took the BTS sky train to Nana and booked into the Orchid House Hotel for 500 baht. It has cable, air con, hot water etc. Its fine.
I did little tonight. I grabbed a bite to eat and washed up. I watched Sum of all Fears on TV and was asleep by 11.00pm. all down to 2 nights on the booze.
Wednesday, January 28th, 2004 – Day 344
I was up at 1.00am and took my clothes to a laundry. I am only here in Bangkok for Shopping really. I have been here a few times previous and have done some of the attractions.
I headed down to Pantip Plaza to check out and purchase pirate PC Games (100 baht), music CD’s (100 Baht) and some DVD’s (130 baht).
Panthip (Pantip) Plaza
Computers, TV’s, cameras and similar items can be good value in Thailand, but you’ll be hard pushed to find one with high quality components selling for significantly less than in the US / Europe.
The best place to go for any type of computer shopping is the multistory Panthip Plaza on Phetburi / Petchburi Rd in Pratunam district (not far from the Amari Watergate hotel). Prices are very cheap and the range extensive, but not all the vendors speak a lot of English.
Though there are a wide range of computer related products on sale, Panthip is most (in)famous for the huge amount of pirated software available. There are literally dozens of different vendors selling hacked versions of software programs, and even the most up-to-date software is available amazingly quickly.
As well as software, pirated versions of all of the top Hollywood movies are also available on DVD or VCD, as are compilation MP3 CD’s with around 12 albums on each. Each CD/VCD/CDROM costs only around 100-150B, as the intense competition helps to keep the prices low.
The Thai government, under pressure from the USA, has periodic crackdowns on Panthip Plaza, but they never seem to last very long. The only lasting effect of the crackdowns seems to be that all the pirated material is no longer kept with the vendor, but is instead in a building down the street and is retrieved when someone makes a purchase.
I had a bite to eat and headed to the river to take a boat to Banlang Poo where I walked to Khao Sarn Road. I picked some 2003 music CD’s and a fake student ID card. I got a bite to eat.
If the image in your mind of Khao Sarn Road is one of a tangle of stereotypical long-haired backpacking farangs staying in a farang ghetto with cheap accommodation, cheap eats and all of the services needed by budget travellers, then you would not be wrong. Just as it has done for almost two decades, this is what Khao Sarn Road serves the budget traveller. But while all of this is available as ever before, Khao Sarn Road now offers so much more.
At 7.00pm, I got a boat back to Central Pier in order to to take the Skytain home. It a big city and it took some time during my first visit to get used to the place.
indeed it would take days for the first time visitor to figure out where they are and how to use the transport options.
Again, I did not go boozing and had an early night.
Thursday, January 29th, 2004 – Day 345
I had already decided that I was going to visit the Forensic Medicine Museum this morning – the so called half-faces of death. Some pictures here.
I book the sky tain to the river pier and took a boat to Wang Land pier. That’s stop ten. The hospital is beside the pier. Its a massive hospital with dozens of buildings and thousands of doctors, staff and patients milling about. There are ten museums on site. They are free but are hard to find with little to no sign posting. I visited three.
1. Forensic Medicine Museum
After trudging up the stairs to the Songkran Miyomsane Forensic Medicine Museum, behind the Siriraj Hospital, the first things you see are a couple of tawny, life-size skeletons: one dangling from a hook, the other in a glass case. The latter one, says a professor, is the remains of the man who was the former head of the hospital?s Forensic Department, and founded the museum, which was named after him, in 1965. ?He was a true man of forensics,? says Somchai Pholeamke with a chuckle. ?He wanted the students to be able to study him.?
The most popular exhibit at the museum is the corpse of Thailand?s most notorious serial killer and cannibal, See Uey Sae Ung. Finally apprehended in the late 50s after racking up a body count of between five and eight young boys, he was sentenced to death. See Uey?s cockroach-brown corpse, waxed with the preservative formalin, is housed in a glass container; the empty eye sockets, as well as the bullet holes left by the single executioner armed with a machine-gun, have been filled in with white parrafin. Beside his upright casket, there are several more occupied by killer rapists and murderers who were also sentenced to death.
The real gallery of grotesques in the museum, however, is the many autopsy photos lining the walls. They detail exactly what an exploding grenade does to a torso, how a broken beer bottle can tear out a throat, a train sever a head, or a knife shred a woman?s genitals. Its hard stuff, photos of the real thing of normal people. Picture of peopel who slashed their wrists (one guy chopped his off), people who shot themselves, who were hit by Molotov Coctails or grenades. All bloody and broken. Hard stuff and not for the squeamish. Lots of arms and legs set in fromolide.
2. Anatomy Museum
Bizarrely enough, the students of anatomy and forensics who come to study here refer to all the skeletons and cadavers as ajaan yai (?head-master?) They also wai them – a prayer-like gesture that is local sign language for respect and gratitude.
In this place we had full male and feamle bodies on display. i walked past the actual dissecting room. There are lots of full grown adults with their chests open for viewing or their skull sawed off to see their brain. There are about 100 foestus and babies as well. Many are Siamese or conjoined twins. Many have been cut open for viewing. Strong stuff but educational. Those of you that are interested in forensics, knowledge about parasites, anatomy etc. One finds skeletons, embryo’s, sick body parts and parasites on alcohol. Some of the people that gave their body for medicine (and especially children) are remembered with a picture, some flowers, small presents etc..
I also visited two other museums. One had to do with the effect of parasites of the body and much detail and examples. The other dealt with the history of Thai medicine.
This macabre monument to death and its causes attracts more visitors — often 100-plus a day — than any art gallery and many other museums in Thailand’s capital. They range from those with a morbid curiosity to serious students of medicine and forensic science. Visitors can study hemorrhaged brains, severed arms with tattoos, and lungs with stab wounds. In one case are skulls punctured by bullet holes, shot at from different angles by forensic scientists in an experiment to study how bullets ricochet inside a human head. Results helped them analyze evidence in murder cases. At the doorway is the skeleton of Songkran Niyomsane, Thailand’s father of forensic medicine and the museum’s founder. He died in 1970. By far the most popular display is the mummified body of Si Ouey, a notorious cannibal and serial killer of boys and girls in the late 1950s. “Don’t commit a crime, otherwise you will end up like this,” joked Dr. Somboon Thamtakerngkit, the museum curator and chief of forensic pathology at Siriraj Hospital, where the museum is located. Somboon said Thai mothers used to scare naughty children with tales of Si Ouey, who was finally caught when the father of one victim and a policeman discovered him at home about to partake of the child’s organs. “Si Ouey thought that it was healthy to eat fresh livers and hearts,” said Somboon Now, Si Ouey, shriveled, brown and coated in wax to prevent mould, slumps against the glass of a phone-booth-like case. A close look reveals incisions in his head made by Thai pathologists who examined his brain for any abnormalities that would mark a serial killer. Many of the displays teach medical students and visitors about the body and what can go wrong with it. And also serve as graphic warnings. “We call the dead bodies ‘Big Teacher.’ We respect the bodies as if they were our teachers or professors. Without them we wouldn’t be able to learn,” Somboon said.
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Click on the picture to see it in its original size
Forensics Museum – Bangkok (29-01-2004)
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Click on the picture to see it in its original size
Forensics Museum – Bangkok (29-01-2004)
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Click on the picture to see it in its original size
Forensics Museum – Bangkok (29-01-2004)
From there I headed to the MBK shopping Mall to check out some shops. Might get a silly portrait done. From there I went to pantip plaza to eat and check out some MP3’s. I then went on the NET to write up about seven days blog.
- Raucous Antics Prove Miss Backpacker Winner in Sydney.
- Flu’s deadly numbers game: Health officials are getting edgy. Avian flu, they say, could do more than wipe out countless chickens. It could trigger the next “big one” – a human flu pandemic that spreads around the world, killing huge numbers of people, as in 1918 when flu claimed a reported 40-50m. Is such a doomsday scenario likely or, like Sars, is avian flu little more than a good scare story?
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Click on the picture to see it in its original size
Bangkok Gym (29-01-2004)