Thailand's Forensic Department is Bangkok's most macabre museum where visitors are welcomed by the founder's skeleton at the entrance door.

The father of Bangkok's Forensic Museum donated his body to his life's cause, and his skeleton now guards the entrance of this most bizarre museum.

This macabre Thailand monument to death attracts more visitors than any art gallery or other museums in the capitol of Bangkok. Tourists and local Thais visiting this museum range from people with a morbid curiosity to medical students and forensic science students.

Visitors can study strange hemorrhaged brains, severed legs and arms with tattoos plus lungs full of deep knife wounds. One case even shows skulls punctured by many bullet holes, shot at from different angles by forensic experts in an experiment to study how gun bullets ricochet inside a human's head. Results helped them analyze evidence in many of Thailand's murder and crime cases.

At the doorway stands the skeleton of Khun Songkran Niyomsane, Thailand's father of forensic medicine and the museum's founder who died in 1970.

By far the most popular display is the mummified body of the Thai-Chinese Si-Ouey, a notorious cannibal and serial killer of young boys and girls in the 1950's.
Don't commit a crime in Thailand, jokes Dr. Somboon Thamtakerngk, otherwise you will end up like this. Dr. Somboon Thamtakerngkit is the museum's curator and chief of forensic pathology at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok, where the museum is located.

Dr. Somboon says that Thai mothers used to scare their naughty children with tales of Si-Ouey, who was finally caught when the father of one his victims discovered him at home about to eat the child's organs. Si-Ouey thought that it was healthy to eat fresh livers and hearts from young children.

Now, Si Ouey, parched and coated in brown wax, 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 could mark a serial killer.

Many of the macabre displays in the museum teach medical students and visitors about the body and what can go wrong with it. The exhibition also serves as a big graphic warning for would-be criminals in Thailand.

"The dead bodies are called 'Big Teachers.' We respect the bodies as if they were our teachers or professors. Without them we wouldn't be able to learn more about forensic science," says Dr Somboon.

A display of blackened lungs could give second thought to smokers, with an aorta full of calcium deposits shows how heart attacks result from clogged arteries. One heart on display is twice its normal size from hypertension.

Reactions from visitors range from scientific curiosity for the human body to grimaces of revulsion for the macabre aspect of this Bangkok museum, soft giggles to quiet respect for the dead are heard inside the museum hall.

Many visitors leave incence, candies or toys near the bodies of babies preserved in formaldehyde. One baby boy is displayed as an example of hydrocephalus, a condition in which the head becomes too large for the body to support.

One visitor noted that visiting the musem after lunch might not be the best idea.
Bangkok's forensic musem in Thailand is definitely not a usual museum.

Bangkok's Forensic Museum
located on the grounds of Siriraj Hospital
2 Prannok Road - Thon Buri - Bangkok Thailand
Tel (02) 411-2003 or (02) 411-0241