Thursday, October 2, 2008

Another Day in BK

Second to last day in Bangkok I decided to go to a forensic science museum as well as an anatomical museum obscurely hidden away in a big hospital campus. I took the river taxi on the Chao Phraya again, enjoying the big brown wake and the loud, studdering engine as the boat slams into the side of the dock and passengers hurry on and off. Found the hospital and within it these two museums which were insanely gruesome.
First off, I went to the forensics museum where I saw the mummified corpses of 4 Thai serial killers standing upright in telephone booth kind of structures, as well as uncountable babies in jars. Aside from the babies were severed limbs from traffic accidents and plenty of liver, brain, heart, lung, skull specimens as they are affected in any of the three following ways: gunwound, stabwound, traffic accident.
As though I hadn't my fill of babies in jars, I went to the anatomical museum afterward, walked up the old wooden stairs passing the dissection floor on the way and smelled that sweet distinctive scent of formaldehyde and formalin. Instantly took me back to the anatomy lab in my memory, but I walked on and reached the tiny exhibits on the 3rd floor of this old school building. There I saw skeletons with curly deformations (arm and leg bones like curly fries) and every possible type of conjoined twin babies in jars, including the most intense: the condition of cephalothoracopagus (Google that). I also saw some other creepily preserved bodies and whatnot; it was a lot like how you'd envision Gunther von Hagen's adolescent imagination would be. So I had my fill of the morbid, which was nice. I always come back to anatomy in the end, it's nice how that works.
I did almost die laughing trying to explain that I saw upwards of one hundred deformed babies in jars to my mom and aunt over a Skype video chat. My mom only made me laugh harder, it's kind of funny if you think about it, there was something absurd about describing it over a video chat while I am so far away.

1 comment:

shawna x. said...

awww wish i were there