From Atlas writer Kalia Kuligowski a field report from Bangkok's Siriraj Medical Museum. Not for the faint of heart or stomach!

As a fan of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, I was really looking forward to checking out the Siriraj Medical Museum once I got to Bangkok. So brothers in tow, we hopped in a taxi and headed off.

Once at the hospital we followed the green signs to the museum, located in one of the hospital's many buildings. After signing in, we made our way upstairs to the museum's desk and paid our 40 baht (a little more than a dollar) and braced ourselves for what lay ahead.

We were greeted by a wall full of graphic photographs of different dead bodies. "Man stabbed in chest" and "Man with tire marks" were some of the most memorable ones. After two minutes I couldn't take it anymore and went to find something else.

To the left was a big display on the tsunamis. "Natural disasters," I thought, "now that's something I can stomach." Boy was I wrong. It was actually a display on how forensic scientists went about identifying bodies after the deadly tsunami in 2005. Severed, injured body parts floated in their cases of formaldehyde in some macabre attempt to be educational. A life-size diorama showed forensic scientists/relief workers around the bloated corpse of a woman with nearby bodies already wrapped up. Fun...

Fleeing all things tsunami, I headed out to a main room where mummies stood at attention in what appeared to be white phone booths. Little did I realize what I was in for...

Read more about the museum after the jump

No, these aren't historically significant mummies. As seen, this mummy is a "Rape Murderer with Death Sentence." There are about six of these phone booth mummies.

Unfortunately the museum didn't have a lot of the info translated into English. Captions were usually translated, but not the full out explanations. (We could have gotten the audio headset tour for an extra 100 baht... but we were too cheap, I know, I know...)

So I don't know if these mummies were naturally made, made on purpose as I suspect they were, or if they were recently unearthed. Either way, they were distinctly and deeply unappealing, particularly as it seems they are gradually falling apart into the metal casserole dishes they are standing in. It's not as if their phone booths homes really provide any kind of preservation. (It was here that I got yelled at for taking pictures, so I had to be sneaky.)

I moved quickly past all the items with faces, namely the fetuses, and spent most of my time amongst the faceless organs and skeletons. There were all kinds of organs, "Intestines blackened by poison", hearts that were shot, hearts that were stabbed, brain injuries, brain anomalies... the list, and the organs went on and on.

Next was the Museum of the History of Thai Medicine, which was really just another area of the one main room. This was a safe, faceless room, but pretty boring. It just had a bunch of different ingredients used in Thai medicine over the years.

The Parasitology Museum was its own separate room full of the wonders of parasites. Evil mosquitoes were the main offender. The most interesting ailment featured was Elephantitis. The enlarged scrotum of a man affected with Elephantitis was on display, along with other exhibits showing various affliction.

Dust mites, or bed bugs, was a favorite display of mine. The display itself, with the life cycle of the mites set in the bed, was pretty creepy and enough to make anyone think twice when they went to lay down to sleep.

The only areas we didn't see were the Pathological Museum and the Prehistoric Museum. The Pathological Museum was closed for renovations and had things like conjoined twins. The Prehistoric Museum was located in another building and wasn't something we were interested in seeing.

After an hour spent at the Siriraj Medical Museum, we left with our spirits dampened, our stomachs queasy, but with a sense of triumph at having survived the Siriraj Medical Museum, where there is just one murder mummy too many for my tastes.