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A Journalist, a General and an Army in Burma January, 1997

by U Thaung.

 

Traded in recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop - Book exchange - Guesthouse - Cafe - Pattaya.

 

On the press and military junta in Burma; narrative of a leading Burmese journalist.

A rare book...

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The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden

 

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A comprehensive account of London's celebrated World renowned East End killer.

The murders in London between 1888 / 91 attributed to Jack the Ripper constitute one of the most mysterious unsolved criminal cases.

This story is the result of many years meticulous research. The author reassesses all the evidence and challenges everything we thought we knew about the Victorian serial killer and the vanished East End he terrorized.

Grab this ripping yarn at Canterbury Tales Bookshop....

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Thailand's very own Serial Killer Legend; The Legend Of The Killer Cannibal.

 

Thailand parents sometimes tell their kids are told "Don’t stay out when it gets dark or the ghost of Sae Uey, or Si-Quay will come out of the shadows and eat you”

In 1960's Thailand, the Cannibal turned into a supernatural legend...

Also a movie villain was invented off the back of this scary monster, but in reality, just a poor Chinese man who went on a killing spree around Bangkok and some of the nearby provinces way back then.

He had a taste for children, literally, no one can be certain, but it is believed that he murdered and ate anywhere from five to ten children.

Speculation also ran rife that his indulgence in an omnivorous diet, may have included some adults that was never proven and was never charged with.

 

Caught red handed in the act of burning one of his victims by the young boy’s father, Sae Uey or Sae Ung was finally arrested in late 1958.

His confessions traumatized and shocked the whole of Thailand, to emerge a bogeyman who still haunts the nation’s psyche today.

After stabbing the children mostly in the throat, Sae Uey told the police, he then hacked open their chests and ate their hearts and livers raw.

 

An immigrant arriving from Hainanese or Hailam who worked as a coolie, (Labourer) rickshaw-puller and farmer after arriving in Thailand, the Country’s most legendary serial Killer was previously a soldier, fighting the Japanese invaders on the Chinese island during World War II.

Some believe that his blood-lust was stoked on the battlefields of Hainan province.

Professor Somchai Pholeamke, the former head of Siriraj Hospital’s Forensics Department, who studied Sae Uey said, “His military commanders told their battle wary troops to eat the livers of the enemy soldiers to digest their strength and power's.”

Many of the Thai movies about Sae Uey use the battlefield as the focal point of his motivations.

A scene in one of his film's shows the young soldier, famished and out alone, after all his comrades had been slaughtered, with nothing to eat but human flesh.

 

Eating livers is a ghastly rite often associated with black magic in Thailand and Southeast Asia.

Over the centuries it has been practiced during times of warfare to dehumanize the enemy and feed on their strength. Just as the Samurai Warriors believe that a man’s courage resides in his gut, which is why the ritual suicide of seppukko consists of disembowelment with their own sword.

The troops of the ancient Khmer empire and the more recent Khmer Rouge ate the livers of their enemies to increase their strength and stamina through battle.

 

Sae Uey’s well preserved cadaver, waxed with the preservative formalin, is the most popular exhibit at the Songkran Niyomsane Forensic Medicine Museum on the grounds of Siriraj Hospital, Thailand's oldest medical facility, in the capitol, Bangkok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siriraj_Medical_Museum

 

The cannibal’s dark-chocolate-brown corpse stands slumped upright in a glass casket in the corner of the room.

The empty eye sockets, as well as the bullet holes left by the executioner’s machine-gun, have been filled in with white lime-paraffin.

Beside his final resting case there are several others occupied by killer rapists and murderers also sentenced to death.

 

Of the two actual skeletons in this museum, the one in a glass case belongs to the former chairman of the hospital’s forensics department, Songkran Niyomsane, who founded the museum in 1965. “He was a true man of forensics,” said Somchai with a chuckle. “He wanted the students to be able to be able to study him after he died.” A gallant legacy for sure.

 

Elsewhere in this Academic Boneyard are Exhibits A to Z of murder weapons, including knives, grippers, ropes, a hammer and a screwdriver, as well as bullets extracted from bodies during autopsies.

More macabre still are the glass jars in which human foetuses, plucked from the womb after the mother had perished, floating in formaldehyde the highly toxic preservative.

One jar houses a two month old victim of hydrocephalus, ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocephalus ) with a grotesquely swollen head that makes it look like an alien offspring.

As a testament to Buddhist compassion, many Thai visitors leave dolls, candies and toys for the spirits of the spirits of the Children.

 

Near the preserved cadavers of the mass murderers lies a glass case full of skulls with bullet holes mostly in their foreheads.

There are no signs in either English or Thai to explain this eary display.

Somboon Thamtakerngkit, the division chief of the hospital’s Forensic Pathology Department, said there is a modus operandi to the morbidity.

“King Rama VIII, the eldest brother of our recent king, was shot in the forehead back in 1946,” she said.

“Not much was known about entrance and exit wounds caused by gunshots then, so they used the skulls of these unknown bodies for the tests.”

The results of these early shots at forensics proved that claims of suicide maybe skulduggery.

Riddled with question marks, this case remains Thailand’s most contentious murder mystery.

 

The real gallery of grotesqueness is the many autopsy photos adorning the walls, they portray, in livid crimsons and bruising blues, exactly what an exploding grenade does to a torso, how a broken beer bottle can tear out a throat, a train sever a head, or a knife shred a woman’s private parts.

As repulsive as most of these images are, the doctors who work with the dead learn invaluable lessons from them to help the living and solve many mysteries.

The autopsies and photos, Somboon said, assist the doctors, the police and judges to bring the perpetrators of these murders most foul to justice.

 

The museum doubles as an ad-hoc classroom for students honing up their knowledge of forensics and anatomy.

They refer to the skeletons and cadavers as ajaan yai (“headmasters”) and Wai them, ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_greeting ) a prayer like gesture that is local sign language for respect and gratitude.

 

Professor Somchai pointed to a glass box containing the cadaver of a murderer-rapist.

“The museum also might teach the students something else, if you do a horrible murder you will end up like this,” he chuckled.

 

The Songkran Niyomsane Forensic Medicine Museum has no age restrictions.

Some visitors are but schoolchildren just about to enter into adolescence.

Thai's believe both the young and the old need to see the horrendous effects of violence, not the make believe on TV or Cinema, but the real anatomy of death.

 

In 2007, the terror trove was renovated and linked together with five other facilities under the banner Siriraj Medical Museum 6.

For a very small entry fee, visitors can drink in a sobering six-pack of mortality checks and loathsome diseases.

 

The Ellis Pathological Museum is devoted to the pioneering work of the Professor A.G Ellis, an American who stayed in Thailand with the assistance of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1919 to 1921 and again from 1923 to 1928.

He was the first pathologist in Thailand as a foreigner, touring this museum of organs infected with cancer, hearts degraded by strokes and livers pickled with alcohol could very well make you never want to drink, smoke or wrap your molars around another bad-cholesterol heavy processed foods ever again.

 

The squeamish and the anally retentive will have an especially boring time in the Parasitology Museum.

Every worst fear and phobia any traveler ever had about the intestinal horrors lurking in Asia has been graphically outlined and exhibited- roundworms, pin-worms, hookworms, whip- worms and tapeworms worms that will arrive in your nightmares.

Idolaters of Stephen King and the medical thrillers of Robin Cook may relish opening this can of parasitic worms, but most visitors give it the bum’s rush.

 

Older Thai folk who grew up with admonitions from their parents that are straight out of a monstrous fairy tale are hypnotized by the cannibal

Of the six facilities, it is the Forensic Medical Museum that draws the biggest crowds and of all the exhibits, it is See Ouey’s upright casket that generates the greatest number of glares and gazes.

 

Younger Thais who have seen the movies and TV shows are amazed by his small size.

A few of the travellers and expats look stupefied by this medieval exhibition of putting killers on public display.

 

For all the movie frames and column inches he has racked up, Sae Uey remains a Thai enigma.

The only information about him in the museum is a newspaper clipping in Thai, taped to the side of his final resting case, reiterating the few known facts about him, his upbringing on Hainan, his days as a soldier, his alleged body count and his execution in 1958, along with a black and white mug shot in which the rodent-faced man is baring his teeth.

But it’s difficult to read the expression on his face?

Was he mugging for the crime photographers and living up to his reputation?

Is this the glower of an extraordinarily angry and embittered man?

Or does he look more like a cornered rat, baring his teeth and snarling out of fear?

 

You will find a lot written about the history of the area and the exodus from China that brought in tide after tide of landed immigrants during World War II and after the country fell to the communists in 1949.

An elderly woman who sold vegetables in the Old Market mentioned, "little changed in the past century" there is a Thai expression about ‘traveling with a pot and a mat’ to describe any trip taken on the cheap.

But it actually came from the fact that those were the only two things that most of us Chinese immigrants brought with us to Thailand.

Even thinking about that journey by boat makes me feel seasick, stuck in a cargo hold for months that stank of excrement and vomit and urine, roaches and rats everywhere.

 

“It was bad enough coming to these foreign lands where people hated us, but our own people preyed on us too.

My brothers and sisters never made it to Thailand.

They were on another boat, but the sailors knew we would be traveling with all our valuables.

Once the boats were at sea, some of these Pirates would rob people and throw them overboard to drown or get eaten by sharks.

That’s what happened to my brothers and sisters she was told.

As a ‘boat person’ Sae Uey would have shared some of those terrible experiences and could well have suffered family tragedies?.

 

Another Chinese immigrant from Hainan, a retired police officer on active duty at the time Sae Uey was on the loose, spoke of the xenophobia directed at the so called “Jews of the Far East” wherever they washed up after the exodus: Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the United States.

“There are many Thai slang terms for us.

Because we were seen as ‘reds’ they sometimes called us ‘pussy blood Chinks’.

Since the communists wanted to destroy religion and the temples we were also referred to as ‘the Chinks who killed the temples’.

That one I still hear quite often, also some of the older expressions like ‘rickshaw Chinks’ and ‘human animals’ that were used to describe our status as the lowliest manual labourers, aren’t really used anymore, expect by a few older people,” said Wen Liang, sitting in a shop-house that was a reconverted opium den, near the Dragon Lotus Temple in Chinatown, Bangkok.

 

Like many people interviewed for this story, the retired cop expressed skepticism that the cannibal killed and ate as many children as he was charged with.

“Let me put it this way, it would not have been difficult to pin some other unsolved murders on a poor, illiterate ‘human animal’.

He did confess to killing some of the children, but it’s possible he may have targeted some adults, too, we found a few other corpses that had been cannibalized in Bangkok around that time, but he was never charged with those crimes or confessed to them.”

Slowly and solemnly, the ex-cop nodded.

 

“We detectives are forever examining their motives, some of my colleagues in the police force interviewed him after he was arrested and they did not think he was insane.

I have often wondered if his anger was not a more generalized rage against the world mixed with a kind of sorrow that came from knowing he would never see his homeland again.

Many Chinese immigrants of the time could probably identify with those misgivings.”

 

In the forensic museum, Professor Somchai had also addressed the quandary of whether Sae Uey was insane or not at the time of his homicidal binge.

He pointed to a long scar on the cadaver’s forehead.,“here you can see the careful incision.

After he was executed, they did an autopsy to see if Sae Uey’s brain was normal, and it was.

But of course it was impossible to really assess his state of mind during the period leading up to his arrest.”

 

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Available Now at Canterbury Tales Cafe, Guesthouse and Bookshop...

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Liberty's Last Stand by Stephen Coonts.

 

Traded back In recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse / Pattaya, Thailand.

 

Stephen Coonts delivers another nail biting thriller starring CIA Director Jake Grafton and his right-hand man, Tommy Carmellini.

The president of the United States stands on an outdoor stage, flanked by powerful members of his administration and party.

Television crews are preparing for broadcast. High above the stage, on a nearby rooftop, a decorated sniper adjusts the scope on his rifle.

Read this thriller @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop, Pattaya.

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Tell Tale: Short Stories by Jeffrey Archer.

 

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Nearly ten years after his last volume of short stories was published, Jeffrey Archer returns with his eagerly awaited, next new collection TELL TALE.

Giving you a fascinating, exciting and often poignant insight into the people he has met, the stories he has come across and the countries he has visited during the past ten years.

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Red Gold by Alan Furst

 

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If you're a mysteries fan, this is set against the rich background of World War II Europe.....

Read on @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop.....Pattaya....

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Traded In recently @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe / Guesthouse / Pattaya, Thailand...

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A Death in White Bear Lake: The True Chronicle of an All-American Town by Barry Siegel

 

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"We want to talk to you about my brother who was murdered twenty-one years ago, can we come in?"

The veneer of tranquility in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, began to crack the day Jerry Sherwood and her son showed up at the police station to inquire about her first-born son, Dennis, adopted by Lois and Harold Jurgens and dead before his fourth birthday.

The autopsy report ruled peritonitis was the cause, but the startling photos of the boy suggested murder.

Follow this True Crime Horror at Canterbury Tales Bookshop.

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The Theory of Death by Faye Kellerman

 

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Living in upstate New York, former LAPD lieutenant Peter Decker is plunged into a bizarre web involving academia, underworld crime, calculating killers in this next compulsive novel in author Faye Kellerman's beloved Decker and Lazarus series.

Read more of Faye's Novels in Pattaya with us....

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The End Game by Raymond Khoury.

 

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Eminent scientist Dr Ralph Padley is dying and he knows it's time to finally reveal the truth.

Padley is hiding a dark secret, which, if it got out, would have deadly consequences.

But there are powerful men who will stop at nothing to silence him.

Read this and more of Ray's Novels at Canterbury Tales Book exchange, Pattaya City.

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The Revelation Code by Andy McDermott

 

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A CIA covert operation in the desert uncovers ancient ruins concealing a humanoid statue, with six wings and the face of a lion.

Team member Ezekiel Cross is convinced that it represents one of four angels prophesied in the Book of Revelation, and when the agents are attacked by Iraqi forces, leaving Cross the only survivor, he steals it to begin his own mission from God.

 

Follow Andy at Canterbury Tales Bookshop......Pattaya....

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Walk a Crooked Mile, by Greg Jones.

 

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Gold Medallist, world champion and world record holder: Lachlan Jones, OAM, is an exceptional athlete.

What makes his success more remarkable is that he has limited vision and stricken with cerebal palsy.

 

'Walk a Crooked Mile' is the inspiring, humorous and enthralling story of Lachlan's rise to the peak of the international wheelchair racing, told from his father's perspective.

It is a journey that begins with the annual Rip to River fun run from Point Lonsdale to the Barwon River, on Victoria's south coast in 1990, when a determined Lachlan walked his first crooked mile in the company of his father.

The journey continues through bouts of illness, financial obstacles and physical and social barriers until its culmination in Gold at the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics.

 

But 'Walk a Crooked Mile' is also a journey of discovery for Greg, as he learns to see the world through his son's eyes and comes to admire Lachlan's resolve to succeed against all odds.

 

Read this inspiring story at Canterbury Tales Bookshop, Pattaya.

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The Lazarus Vault by Tom Harper.

 

800 years ago, one man wrote the legend that became the greatest quest in history...

 

Deep in the heart of London, the Monsalvat Bank is small, secretive and fabulously wealthy, with roots going far back into the middle ages.

Be fascinated by Tom at Canterbury Tales Book-exchange....

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The Second Sister by Claire Kendal

 

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An obsessive quest to solve the mystery of her older sister’s disappearance puts a young woman in mortal jeopardy in this taut, sophisticated novel of psychological suspense from the author of the “truly riveting”

The Book of You.

An intoxicating cocktail of loyalty and Secrets, lies and betrayal.

 

Read this brand new book (2017) at Canterbury Tales Bookshop.

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Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith

 

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Wolves Eat Dogs; Renko returns for his most enigmatic and baffling case, the death of one of Russia's latest billionaires, which leads him to Chernobyl and the Zone of Exclusion, closed to the world since 1986s nuclear disaster.

It is still glowing with radioactivity, now inhabited only by the Authorities, some shady scavengers, a few reckless scientists, and some elderly peasants who refuse to relocate.

Renko's journey to this ghostly netherworld, the crimes he uncovers there, and the Secrets they reveal about the New Russia make for an unforgettable adventure.

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A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order by F. William Engdahl..

 

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This is all about power, power over entire nations and continents.

The story describes the vehicle to that unparalleled power over nations, oil, & the vital role it playes in peace as well as wars in the past century.

Henry Kissinger, former American Secretary of State put it delightfully during the first oil shock of the early 1970's.

He declared, "Control the oil and you control entire nations."

A thin red line runs through the history of the world since Fashoda and that is covered in Blood & Oil

This book is not for the faint hearted, but it is meant to provoke reflection and discussion among those who can see beyond the daily media manipulation of reality that is called news......

 

Hear the truth with Canterbury Tales Bookshop Pattaya City,.....

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My Dark Places by James Ellroy

 

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From the renowned author of L.A. Confidential comes My Dark Places, an real investigative autobiography by James Ellroy.

In 1958, Ellroy's mother, Jean, was raped, killed, and dumped along a road in El Monte, California, a rundown L.A. suburb.

The killer was never caught and the case was closed.

It was a sordid, low key Murder that no one remembered. Except her son.

James Ellroy was ten years old when his mother died, his sadness was complex and ambiguous, "I cried, I cried all the way to L.A.

I hated her, I hated El Monte, some unknown killer just bought me a brand new beautiful life."

James grew up obsessed with murder and crime.

 

Read this Classic with Canterbury Tales Bookshop....

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Apaches by Lorenzo Carcaterra

 

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Guesthouse / Cafe, Pattaya.

 

Remember these names: Boomer, Dead-Eye, Pins, Geronimo, reverend Jim, Mrs, Columbo.

They were great cops, in fact the best cops, but they are cops no more.

 

Now they are Apaches, a renegade unit working on their own.

 

With this novel, the author of the stunning Sleepers returns to the mean streets he knows so well.

In doing so, he has written his most explosive, electrifying, and startling book yet.

In the early 1980's.

Crack cocaine has made its devastating appearance, violence is ever escalating and so is an unnerving lack of morality.

Things are happening that have never happened before.....

Read this popular crime Novel at Canterbury Tales Bookshop, Pattaya City.....

 

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[Daveo]

So folk are asking me why recently I am pushing such things as Healthy foods and beverages on a bookshop thread?, well I will explain.......

I used to live the dream in Pattaya and do most if not all the things that I may have been advised against?

Anyway about 7 yrs ago I started getting weaker and after some more progression I went for some Tests as I knew something was wrong? Iam now 60 yrs old.

The test results came back as early stage Myositis (IBM)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusion_body_myositis

 

At first I read up on it, no treatment and no cure, typical, trust my luck....anyway from back then and the slow progression I am now in a wheelchair and along with the illness a few more complications follow.

 

Life without stairs and falling over is not an option are things to remember, I cant do stairs or even steps higher than a couple of inches, falling over is one of the common issues with IBM due the the weakness and things like drop foot, also as you don't have the strength in your arms - shoulders to stop you banging your head when you fall and the danger of breaking bones as you don't have the protection of muscles etc and the last thing you need is a broken arm etc.

 

Other frustrating issues such as my esophagus (swallowing reflex) is weak and shuts down at night so I have to sleep on my side with my head facing down as my saliva runs out onto a towel on my pillow, if on my back my saliva goes into my windpipe and I wake up chocking.

 

This can also cause dehydration which is another problem related to the water retention, taking Diuretics, can help but getting the balance is tricky as you either dehydrate your system and this can cause constipation issues and headaches which effect my cognitive reactions or too much water tends to fill my legs up and I spend the night peeing and disrupting my sleep.

 

Also the lack of circulation in my legs and feet mainly due to lack of movement, exercise etc even here in this climate I get freezing cold feet.

 

So way back I stopped going out drinking and abusing my body while living the dream here in Pattaya and was determined to stay off the med's although there is no treatment the Dr's give you pain killers and anti inflammatory etc but I did not want to become a life long customer to big pharma so I started to study alternatives and with Google nowadays is a great tool for that.

 

I started to read amongst other things Turmeric, Garlic, Ginger, Honey, Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV) and started adding them naturally into my diet, a great thing re Pattaya - Thailand all these healthy herbs etc are readily available and from the farmers markets locally so I got right into it.

 

I noticed my breathing improved, I also started regular deep breathing exercises, also in the past I would often 2 - 4 times a year catch a cold mostly from guys coming on holiday and breathing their germs at me and I would always end up with a chest infection from that and since I have used these herbs I have literally had not one single Chest infection for several years.

 

Keeping the natural chemicals from these and other things really help immensely and learning how to use them is important too, for example cooked Garlic enhances the taste of many dishes but can lower the natural goodness of the Allicin which is the chemical in Garlic that helps attack a virus when it enters your system.

 

Crush or slice raw garlic and add it to anything savoury just before you eat it and you will get the full benefits, also add garlic cloves to Honey and let sit for a week or more then take a couple of spoons a couple times a day.

 

So then I saw this new add online for a beverage that just happen to contain all the stuff that I take regularly here in Thailand so put in an initial order to try some, The Honey was beautiful tasting, the Apple Cider Vinegar although fierce to taste is good quality and the Health Tonic containing all of them I found very palatable, adding it to warm water and even some lime juice is not a bad taste at all and you get the benefits from it, I even add some slices of fresh Ginger and garlic to enhance it.

 

So there it was and how it happened and why we are offering these products which are made in North Thailand and I have got to say they have the making of them just right.

 

You may think as you are healthy and don't need these items but hey same as taking Garlic, don't wait till you get sick before taking? keep it in your system all the time and you will reap the benefits, as with for example the Healthy Tonic, take a couple table spoons in warm water before bed and first thing in the morning and see how you feel over time.

 

You never know what is around the corner concerning your health as I found out ????