Museum of Gore

After visiting countless museums showing a huge range of items, I have to admit that I am not cultured enough to enjoy museums. This is a fact I accepted after I read some very wise advice, scribbled on the wall of a youth hostel in Florence.

It suggested that people who don’t like museums should get out of the queue – making the lines shorter for the people who really want to go to them.

There is one museum though...

One slightly different to the normal...

It has stuck with me and I can recall most of the things I saw.

I visited the museum in the morning and was walking out the doors by lunchtime... but I didn’t eat lunch that day.

There were a group of us. We all skipped lunch.

The museum is in Bangkok. It’s the Museum of Forensic Medicine, hidden at the back of the Siriraj Hospital. It’s become a strange, macabre and brutally honest museum.

The craziest section is placed in the centre of the main room.

It takes pride of place and looks like a telephone booth.

Inside, propped against the side of the booth, leans a man.

His skin has a brown, leathery look. He stands on a drip tray. He’s long since dead. This man was a serial killer (or was he a rapist?). Whichever he was, I couldn’t help but stare.

There is a head – sawn in half.

You look at one side and see the man’s

hair and face, ears and skin.

Next to that half of his head is the other half –

turned around so that you see brain and skull.

There are foetuses, Siamese twins, body parts twisted apart from home-made bombs. There are skulls – cracked and gunshot. There are murder weapons and

blood-stained clothing.

And all around you lingers the smell of formaldehyde.

There are so many things to look at - to stare at in wonder and morbid fascination. There are so many sights that linger still – years and years and years after I saw them.