When modern medicine fails, people often turn to what has, in the West, come to be known as “alternative medicine”. Phuket has a large market for such treatments, such as acupuncture clinics and herbal spas offering cures for a wide variety ailments, both real and perceived.
These more familiar forms of “alternative” medicine are not all Thailand has to offer, however. The District Dean of Baan Tak, the chief monk in the district, recently discovered that a pair of monks under his supervision were offering a treatment that was very alternative indeed.
The strange treatment was brought to light by a concerned villager who had photos apparently showing a monk standing over a naked, middle-aged woman pouring lao khao (rice wine) over her breasts and stroking them with a knife.
Phra Wiset Chattawaroh, 51, said that he had been a monk for five years when he founded the forest temple two years ago. He had not been taught the healing methods from anyone, they came only from his own spiritual power, he explained.
Cancer patients were treated with herbs from the surrounding forest. Victims of black magic, however, required a more “hands-on” treatment. The problem, according to Phra Wiset, would usually lie in the breast area. Phra Wiset and his assistant, Phra Bunpeng Attathmaroh, 40, would have the patient remove their top. Once exposed, the monk poured lao khao over the breasts and gently stroked them with a copper sorcerer’s knife while chanting spells to banish the black magic.
Most of the patients requiring this treatment were women. After recovering, the patients would return and make donations that Phra Wiset would put toward his fund for building a new and improved temple. Lt Col Phiriya Meunjit, Duty Inspector at Baan Tak District Police Station, said that the pair had been defrocked and would be charged with indecent assault.
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