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BANGKOK X-FILES is a day tour for travelers who think they've seen it all. While appearing thoroughly modern on it exterior, Bangkok still retains enough secrets, Fortean phenomena, and magical mysteries to keep Mulder and Skully working overtime. Westerners rarely confront the facts of death, but the Siamese are true Anais, fascinated by death in all its manifestations. Your personal guide will help you gain admittance to a number of rarely-visited shrines, temples and museums, and is fully adept at preventing inadvertent possessions. Visit two of Bangkok's most famous spirit shrines: Nai Lert Park, piled with hundreds of phallic offerings, some of startling dimensions, and the Erawan Shrine, with its four-faced wish-granting Brahman idol. Travel up the Chao Praya River to Siriraj Hospital, home to some of Bangkok's forgotten museums (well, not forgotten by Japanese honeymooners who seem to flock here). The Museum of Criminology offers up a dusty collection of organs pierced most foully, and moldering corpses including the Thai boogie man, a cannibal with the appropriate name of See Oooey. The Museum of Anatomy displays the preserved bones of former Doctors-in-residence alongside monsters in formaldehyde and an impressive feat of surgical skill - the radiating web of an entire human nervous system removed from its body. Also open for viewing are the Museum of Parasites, and the Museum of Thai Traditional Medicine and Massage. After lunch on the river (what, not feeling hungry?), visit shops that sell spirit houses. These charming miniatures are placed on most properties and kept well-tended to provide an attractive alternative for spirits who would otherwise move in with the living. If there's time, take in the "Body Snatcher" Temple, home of one of Bangkok's competing corpse retrieval societies. Besides exhibiting mortifying photos from their midnight runs, they occasionally display their "golden child," a gilt stillborn possessed with fearsome supernatural powers.
Day Tour price: US$59
Includes personal guide. Please pay for local transportation, lunch for the guide, and admissions. This tour is available Mon-Fri only.
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