Trip to the hospital (museum)... Dead Bodies

Trip Start Jun 11, 2008

Trip End Aug 07, 2008

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Flag of Thailand Bangkok, Thailand
Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Yesterday, Liz and I were basically what one might call "wastes of space." I slept til 11 am and then wandered off to find water and a bland, safe breakfast of mashed potatoes and yogurt. Liz slept til 1 pm and then she woke up and we laughed for ages, while lying in our bunk beds, over the night before. We didn't do anything until 2:30 pm.

At 2:30 we decided to try to find the Medical Forensic Museum at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok. It really wasn't too far from our guest house, but it took ages to get there. Our guest house owner tried to help us find a taxi that knew how to get there--even by looking at a map--and two taxis couldn't figure it out. So instead we took a tuk-tuk.

That tuk-tuk had a slight collision with a taxi cab while we were in it... no one was hurt, nothing was really damaged, and the two drivers talked it out in relative peace from their seats. How interesting. The tuk-tuk driver had to stop and ask questions and directions about 4 times and he took us to the wrong place twice.

We did ultimately find the museum, on the hospital's campus, after an hour and 20 minutes

Awwww

. It was 3:50. My guidebook said the museum closed at 4:30, but no, it closed at 4. We had 10 minutes.

This museum is awful. Not bad quality, but just horrifying. Dead bodies. Pictures of dead bodies from traumatic deaths. The dead body of one of Thailand's worst serial killers. Bloodied clothes and weapons from his victims. We weren't allowed to take photos, so I didn't, but somehow this guy took a whole video and put it up on YouTube, so look here if you want--but viewer discretion advised. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmuH_DLVNZs&feature=related If you don't want to watch the video, here's a short newspaper article about the museum: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/610343/visit_bangkoks_forensic_museum_its.html

The whole time I was walking around with my hand over my mouth, saying, Why did we try so hard to get here? This is awful. But it was really, really interesting, and we wanted to see something quirkly Bangkok, and it was sort of like the Body Worlds exhibits in the US.

The taxi ride was probably 10 minutes back. It really wasn't that far. Liz packed and we went out to her last dinner--Nepalese food, actually. She left at 9:30 and I hung about Khao San and then got a proper good night's sleep!