Bangkok offers odd, morbid museum

BANGKOK, Thailand - It's a rare museum where visitors are welcomed by the founder's skeleton.

But the father of Bangkok's Forensic Museum donated his body to his life's cause, and his bones now rest at the entrance for medical students and ordinary onlookers to examine.

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. One case holds 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.

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," quips Dr. Somboon Thamtakerngkit, the museum curator and chief of forensic pathology at Siriraj Hospital, where the museum is located.

Somboon says 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 eat the child's organs.

At the doorway, offering visitors a silent goodbye is the skeleton of Songkran Niyomsane, the father of forensic medicine in Thailand and the museum's founder. He died in 1970.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times 490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 Contact the Times | Privacy Policy Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright