According to Kanchana, being stung by a scorpion results in about three or four hours of intense agony and a swelling that lasts a couple of days for a normal person. Actual fatalities are rare. Since she began doing the shows on Koh Samui, she has been granted a physical immunity to the scorpions’ poison-tipped tails. All the same, she likened their sting to being jabbed with a needle.
Kanchana’s act is charged with the same erotic electricity that the old ‘snake enchantresses’ used to charm their audiences during the American sideshows of the 1920s and ‘30s. But as three-ring circuses flourished, these sideshows of old—unable to compete otherwise—ramped up the gore-and-cleavage quotient with strippers and so-called ‘geeks’ who bit the heads off live chickens. Through these spectacles, Westerners who never got to travel—either physically or through fibre-optics—were able to see Siamese twins, Fijian mermaids, African dwarves and voodoo icons.
The Ripley’s museums, with their shrunken heads from Ecuador, skull bowls from Tibet, and perfectly preserved three-legged horses, trade on this nostalgia and all the taboos that have since become kitsch. After all, when much of the world has access to a constant stream of smut and violence on the Internet or cable TV, watching a woman in a bathing suit swallow a sword isn’t quite going to cut it.
At temple fairs in Thailand, however, the curtain has yet to fall on the traditional freak show. During the country’s biggest and longest fair, held annually at Bangkok’s Wat Phu Khao Thong—the ‘Golden Mount’—during the Loy Krathong festival (usually in November), there’s still a tent with a girl in a rubber mermaid’s costume, the corpses of doll-like babies pickled in formaldehyde, and a female ghoul with a pretty face and a body made out of rubber entrails.
Once banished to the boondocks of politically-suspect obsolescence and outright hokum, the sideshow has slowly been creeping back onto pop culture’s centre stage, thanks to the notorious Jim Rose Circus—which has amassed a global cult following of punk-star proportions, and the late HBO series Carnivale—a gritty drama with supernatural set pieces that follows a Depression-era carnival run by a midget and starring jugglers, sword swallowers, strippers and a ‘snake enchantress’ played by horror-movie vamp Adrienne Barbeau.
When did freaks become so normal and mainstream?
For Valentine’s Day in 2006, Ripley’s Museum in Pattaya ushered in a new annual event intended to upstage its rivals with a group wedding ceremony and publicity stunt called ‘Till Death Do Us Part’. The nuptials commenced with a parade down Beach Road. Leading the pack was a marching band in black outfits playing a brassy, hilariously off-key version of the go-go bar standard, ‘Final Countdown’. Behind them were the seven grooms, dressed to chill in black tuxedos and ghoulish make-up, replete with blood and fake scars. Bringing up the rear was a train of typical Thai wedding guests, holding traditional fertility symbols such as sugarcane and bananas.
On a stage between the Ripley’s Haunted Adventure House (with the façade of a 19th-century American casket company) and a stall selling pairs of handcuffs and lingerie (just what a roaming Romeo needs in Pattaya), the couples sat before a row of chanting monks. The guests of honour were the newly betrothed Scorpion Queen and Centipede King, Bunthewee, who had just broken his own Guinness Record by living in a glasshouse with 1,000 centipedes for 28 days. He sported a tuxedo and a facial tattoo of his totemic arthropod, while the bride wore a bloodstained wedding dress and tarantula legs of rouge around her eyes.
During the wedding they reprised some of their capers with the creepy-crawlies (Bunthewee even had a 20-centimetre-long centipede hanging out of his mouth), and they proved to be the most constantly venerated couple during the blessing ceremony. True to Thai tradition, guests emptied conch shells of holy water over their hands and offered their blessings—or, in my case, condolences. The only foreigner getting married was Darren Hammond from Manchester, England. Darren said that he and his Thai girlfriend were “always doing crazy things together, but it’ll be hard to top this”.
The Scorpion Queen and the Centipede King got married at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum in Pattaya on Valentine’s Day in 2006.
Right you are, Darren, I thought, as they cued the dancing zombies. All actors at Ripley’s Haunted Adventure House, they whirled and shuffled around to a dance number with two uniformed nurses in skimpy outfits holding up stakes with rubber heads on them, as if George Romero had been invited to choreograph a Vegas revue of Dawn of the Dead.
The plan for the mass wedding was dreamt up by Ripley’s general manager, Somporn Naksuetrong, and his team. He said they want to keep it going as a yearly event.
The climax of the ceremony—when love copulates with death in a display of fidelity to Saint Valentine’s lovelorn martyrdom—came when each couple took turns getting into a coffin fit for two. This macabre twist on a Thai rite of matrimony—usually enacted in the bridal suite, with the parents of the recently betrothed first sitting or lying down on the bed—is supposed to ensure a long and blissful union not only in this life, but future reincarnations, too. Such beliefs and practises are difficult for most Westerners to grasp, but essential if you want to court, bed and marry a Thai partner.
Most of the spectators at this reincarnated sideshow—backpackers, ageing package tourists carrying saddlebags of cellulite, local office workers and ladyboys—were more amused than anything, taking shot after shot with their mobile phones and digital cameras. But it’s hard to freak out an audience these days—especially with competition like MTV’s Jackass or the Jim Rose Circus, with its cast of performers such as the ‘Human Serpent’, who has a real forked tongue and scales tattooed on his face; Mexican transvestite wrestlers like Low Blow Ventura and Trailer Trash Guerro, who wear strap-on dildos in the ring as they grapple for the ‘Panty Weight Belt’; and the ‘Amazing Mr. Lifto’ who hoists car batteries with a chain attached to a piercing in his tongue. And there are probably a huge number of puritans who are grateful for the fact that the concrete blocks he lifts with his pierced penis should ensure he doesn’t pass on any trade secrets to his progeny.
By comparison, the performances of Kanchana and Bunthewee seem quaint and subdued. They would never consider doing anything as extreme as Mr. Lifto or Low Blow Ventura. “We have to respect Thai culture and traditions,” she said. “So I can’t wear any outfits that are too revealing. We’re not so different from most people in this country. Thais love putting insects in their mouths.” Kanchana smiled. “But we’re good Buddhists so we never harm any of the scorpions or centipedes.”
I sighed. “Do you think you two could start acting a bit weirder and throw me some sexier anecdotes? I’m trying to write a tabloid exposé here and you guys just aren’t playing along.” This elicited a laugh from them, but alas, no juicy tidbits.
For the pair, the shows they perform at the Snake Farm on Koh Samui are a well-paid escape from the drudgery and penury of fishing and pig farming. To celebrate her first smashing of the Guinness Record, Kanchana’s sole desire was endearingly banal: going out for a bowl of her favourite Thai soup at a small restaurant. After she set a world record for holding an 18-centimetre-long scorpion in her mouth for two minutes and three seconds in 2008, and again after she reclaimed her title from a Malaysian woman by living with 5,000 scorpions for 33 days the following year, Kanchana returned to the very restaurant to order the same soup on both occasions.
Any first impressions of them being salt-of-the-earth folks were seconded by Ripley’s manager, Sompong, “They’re not Bangkok people, you know. They’re much friendlier and more humble than that. Sometimes they call me just to see how I’m doing, not because they want something.”
The Centipede King is a polite if sullen young man. Out of shyness or perhaps deference (she’s eight years older than him), he let her answer most of the questions. Whenever he was asked a direct question, his body turned rigid, he looked down at his hands and murmured a word every few seconds. It was rare to hear him speak more than five or six wor
ds at any given time and even rarer to see him smile. Had the centipede’s bite—much more toxic and painful than the scorpion’s—wrought havoc with his brain chemistry? Given the high rate of injuries and occasional fatalities suffered by the country’s freak-show fraternity, snake-handlers in particular, it would not be surprising if he’d suffered some neurological damage. For the sideshow performers of today or a century ago, not much has changed in this respect. Danger pay does not figure in their salaries and many will bow out to early retirements and premature demises.
But the couple is well aware of these potential perils. In the next few years, both of them are planning on retiring, for fear that all the accumulated poisons in their systems will do irreparable damage to the children they want to have.
Could they really give up their lofty titles as the reigning Scorpion Queen and Centipede King? Kanchana responded to the question with a playful smile that said she doesn’t take her career too seriously, and it would take a lot to try her patience. “Sure. We’d love to live normal lives again and open a small Thai restaurant on Samui. That’s our big dream.”
That’s it? Suffice it to say, anyone who has ever interviewed or encountered the country’s most infamous ‘freaks’ since the original Siamese twins Chang and Eng became the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’, has probably been touched by their humility, politeness and the modesty of their ambitions. At heart they are not very odd at all: millions of working-class Thais share their humble dream to start a family and run their own small business.
In a final, desperate gambit to provoke an outrageous reaction, I enquired if they had seen any of the stunts in the movie version of Jackass, such as shooting fireworks out of one’s sphincter. And would they ever consider laying their love life bare on a talk show or reality programme like Westerners do?
The Centipede King blushed and picked at his nails. The Scorpion Queen frowned and paused. Her forehead creased with puzzlement. Realising that the query was serious and not a jest, Kanchana rolled her eyes. “Those people are weird.”
After setting two world records and performing for some 15 years at the Snake Farm, Kanchana’s most cherished memories are meeting her husband and chatting with the princess. Growing up as a fisherwoman mired in dire straits surrounding a speck of a village on a rocky coast, she was always well aware of being looked down on by the middle and upper classes of urbanites (which always makes the unfortunate look down on themselves too). Getting to meet and receive encouragement from a member of the royal family had bolstered her spirits and enthroned her self-respect like never before.
And so it is with all the seekers of publicity and chasers of fame, would-be record-breakers and reality-show hopefuls—vain as they are, and yet driven by a basic and very human need to be loved and admired—to be the best at something, no matter how ludicrous, like bathing in maggots.
Thailand’s First Lady Of Forensics
When a nine-year-old boy was caught in the crossfire of the Thai government’s ‘War Against Drugs’ that resulted in more than 2,500 extrajudicial killings over three months in 2003, Dr. Porntip Rojanasunan investigated the shooting. When the tsunami laid waste to the Andaman coast in December 2004, the forensic doctor worked for 40 days straight to identify thousands of corpses. After Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans, she and her team flew to Louisiana. During the political tumult of 2010, when a glitzy area of Bangkok was under siege and fire, the doctor’s department launched an investigation—mostly stymied by the powers-that-be—into the most contentious killings.
High-profile cases like these, constant run-ins with the Thai police and her unique Goth-punk image have made Dr. Porntip a celebrity and cover woman in Thailand. She has also been profiled in numerous women’s magazines around the world. But it was the Asian tsunami that first swept the Bangkok-born doctor into the global media’s searchlight following her interviews on CNN, the BBC and Fox News.
Dr. Porntip’s outspoken nature and run-ins with the police have created numerous bones of contention.
Not long after the ten metre-high waves slammed into the coastline of Thailand, Dr. Porntip and her team established a makeshift morgue on the grounds of Wat Yan Yao, a Buddhist temple in the most deluged province with the highest body count—Phangnga. Within days, thousands of corpses with salt water and bodily fluids leaking from their mouths were laid on the ground outside the temple. To keep the bodies from decomposing too quickly, the volunteers used blocks of dry ice, so an eerie mist drifted over the dead. The ice also prevented chickens from pecking at the maggots wriggling out of wounds and eye sockets. At times the volunteers would gasp and reel back in terror as the corpses moaned; they thought the dead were coming back to life. But, as Dr. Porntip explained, when gases escape from corpses, they wheeze past the vocal cords.
Kelly May, the original publisher of Thailand’s version of the celebrity scandal sheet OK!, was one of the volunteers assisting in identifying the deceased and doing translations for people looking for loved ones. She remembers walking into the temple grounds and being horror-struck. “There were limbs poking up everywhere, and these hideously deformed bodies so swollen and black that they didn’t even resemble humans but something out of a bad horror movie.
“Dr. Porntip stayed on the temple grounds, and although she was working from 7am until midnight for 40 days to help identify thousands of bodies, I never saw her lose her temper once. I just have so much respect for her. She came in, got down and dirty, and she always looked great. It was funny, but some of the volunteers even got their hair cut like hers.”
On an emotional level, how did the forensic specialist cope with such an unprecedented catastrophe? This was a question put to her by freelance photographer Steve Sandford as they stood in the middle of the temple, overwhelmed by the eye-watering stench of bodies putrefying in 35-degree heat—which soon made it difficult to tell whether they were male or female, Asian or Caucasian. “She told me, ‘We just have to do the best we can’, and it’s typical of her cool and professional manner,” said Steve. “I’ve photographed her doing an autopsy in her lab; she’s very quick and methodical. She sliced up the body of this guy who’d died in a motorcycle accident in about 30 minutes and removed the top of his head to show me some of the injuries that had caused his death. She also pulled out his liver and put that on the table to show me that he’d been an alcoholic. I think I skipped breakfast that day and stopped drinking for a while.”
***
At the Central Institute of Forensic Science (CIFS), Dr. Porntip sat on a black leather couch, the only concession to trendiness in her clutter-free, grey-carpeted office. She summed up her career with a grin, “I’m a lady of disaster.” That’s a typical example of her morbid sense of humour, colour-coordinated with a stylish black outfit, matching boots and a porcupine hairdo with quills of tinted red hair sticking out.
Speaking about the post-mortem identification of more than 5,000 bodies after the tsunami, the doctor gave more credit to her ad hoc team than herself. “It was the hardest work of my life, but we were happy to help them [the victim’s families]. Ninety per cent of my team were volunteers and they did a great job. From the tsunami, I think our government has learned a lot about Critical Incidents Management, before which we had no idea about.”
Still, she admitted that the situation was completely shambolic—trying to co-ordinate volunteers and experts from many different countries; dealing with frantic and grieving relatives; cutting away pieces of flesh to bag for DNA samples; examining mouths for dental work and bodies for scars and tattoos. She had to sleep in a van at night and lost three kilos during the first couple of weeks.
To make matters worse, Dr. Porntip was caught in the backwash of allegations from the forensic unit of the Thai police that she had wrongly identified some of the bodies. In retaliation, she accused them of trying to steal the credit from her team. But the general public remained firmly on her side. In surveys taken at the time, Dr. Porntip was second only to then-Prime Minis
ter Thaksin Shinawatra as the country’s most popular non-royal. Having already received the regal title of khunying (the equivalent of dame), from His Majesty the King for her contributions to the country, she was promoted to the position of acting director of the CIFS in late 2005. Once again, rumours made the rounds that she would forsake forensics for a prominent position in the body politic.
“Many political parties have invited me to be a member, but I will not be a politician. No, never. I just want to be an ordinary person and establish the institute for the people, but I don’t want to be the director. But at this time, we don’t have anyone else to do the job.” Later she relented to public pressure, becoming the director in 2008.
Decades of dissecting cadavers and poring over the minutia of crime scenes have imbued the doctor with intense concentration. Whether speaking or listening, she made constant eye contact. Her stare was unnerving, partly because it’s so uncommon coming from a Thai woman. But in a justice system almost completely dominated by men, she has also seemed wary of acting too feminine or showing any signs of vulnerability. Any questions that missed the mark were immediately shot down with an impatient “No, no, no”, before she clarified the matter.
The forensics specialist was chatty and affable, but kept her professional distance. Personal questions received terse answers: her Thai husband is a bank manager; her teenage daughter spends five days a week at a boarding school; the doctor still listens to a lot of Western music “but only female singers”. Elaborations were not forthcoming.
Jim Algie Page 18