TK

No pictures allowed! It’s probably for the best: the exhibits in the Bangkok Forensic Museum are universally unpleasant to see.

Today, the more strong-stomached among us went to a museum showcasing all sorts of horrible ways to die. The entry was a reasonable ฿200 (actually, for ฿199 we got the museum pass which grants admission to a raft of museums. It was located in a working hospital next to some truly wonderful street food at the riverboat station.

Forensics weren’t the only exhibits on display: there were gruesome genetic diseases, tsunami aftermath displays and parasite dioramas to complete the picture. No matter which manner of illness and death haunt your nightmares, you can face them in the daylight here.

And face them we did. Birth defects to make your heart ache: non-viable conjoined twins (not going to us the “S” word here!), hydrocephalics, microcephalics, mermaids (not literally of course, though that would be pretty sweet, but a fetus with its legs fused), babies born without the backs of their skulls. All these in jars, at eye level. A terrible mix of disgust and sadness.

But not too much sadness. After all, these babies were never born and you can convince yourself without too much work that they probably didn’t suffer too much. They certainly didn’t suffer long; never more than 9 months.

For conscious, adult suffering, move on to the forensic part of the museum. Here you’ll find the plain bodily result of excess: bloated, cirrhotic livers, enlarged hearts, plaque-filled hearts, black lungs. Gazing at these exposed, abused organs has no doubt launched thousands of ephemeral pledges. But out of sight and out of mind and we quickly fall back to old habits. Organs left to drown slowly in such pleasurable poisons.

Next, the forensics of the more direct violence of person on person. Rape/murderers mummified in glass coffins, upright to the gawking crowds as retribution for their former owners’ crimes. Gunshot wounds. Dismemberment photos. The tools of suicide: a length of electrical wire someone actually used to kill themselves in a display case in front of you brings strange sensations. Such a common item somehow imbued with creepiness by its bland museum exhibit placard’s story. Even more sadness: the clothes a raped and murdered women was wearing at her end. The gruesome: the digestive tract of someone who drank acid. And on and on.

Finally, if we’re not born broken or fall prey to ourselves or our fellow man, there’s the rest of nature to contend with. Parasites of all kinds. Worms in the liver. The brain. Snakes and insects and creepy-crawlies. Elephantiases. Malaria. Magnified models of flukes and helminths and bedbugs and lice. The living things we prefer not to think about.

There is something about the plain rawness of this museum that underlies the reality of death. There’s no sugar coating, no artful softening of the experience you might find in the west. Here’s a baby born horribly deformed, we sewed it back together and now it’s floating in formaldehyde in front of you. It’s a shocking reality, but I found the shock quickly recede and be replaced by a different feeling: a sad sort of acceptance.

One way or another, you and I will die. There are uncountable ways to go and it’s useless to worry too much about them. Many will no doubt say that seeing such death makes you grateful for life, and it’s true. The feeling is there and it lasts. But most importantly to me, it made me recall that I am alive now. Life is the water we swim in and you can easily become unaware of it as you live.

A reminder that you are alive now is wonderful.