A Slap Up Good Shrine
About a forty minute drive from the centre of Bangkok, if you’re lucky with the traffic, you can reach an unmarked, dusty side-street with a couple of open-fronted car repair garages. Venture down it until you see the 7-11, then cross the shabby forecourt opposite, and you’ll find an old two-storey concrete building fronted by a pair of sliding white doors.
I looked around at the distinctly unspiritual surroundings and wondered if I’d made a mistake with the directions: this certainly didn’t look like any kind of shrine. But then the doors slid open and my concerns vanished with the appearance of a beaming, middle-aged Thai lady, heavily made up and resplendent in a sequinned purple robe and massive floral headdress, so large that it even had space for its own (fake) parrot. This could only be Khun Khemika, keeper of the Chuchok shrine.
As she ushered me inside and my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that every nook and cranny of the sizeable room behind her was filled with statues. Some were big, some were small, some were clothed, others were as naked as the day they were born. And many, I couldn’t help but notice, were also sporting large, erect appendages. In fact, they were all representations of the same man - Khun Chuchok.
The story goes that Chuchok was a poor and hideously ugly beggar who lived at the time of the Buddha, a couple of thousand years ago. He had done some good deeds in a past life however, so karma rewarded him with a dramatic change in fortunes when he reached middle age. A beautiful young lady turned up begging for his hand in marriage and he was suddenly showered with great wealth.
Unlike typical Western fairy tales though, it wasn’t to be happily ever after. With the help of his new fortune, Chuchok succumbed to a life of sensual excess. He had a particular weakness for fornication and feasting, ultimately meeting his demise at the hands of the latter, gorging himself so outrageously at a banquet that his stomach actually physically exploded (a lesson there for all of us emerging from lockdown and hitting our favourite restaurant for the first time in months).
Despite these rather mixed fortunes, a few hundred years later people had started praying to Chuchok statues for good luck. Fast forward to twenty years back and one of these was Khun Khemika, at the time suffering from a nasty kidney problem. Her prayers for healing were answered with a miraculous full recovery and, once on her feet again, she decided to pay back her debt by setting up a dedicated Chuchok shrine. She now fawns lovingly over some 5,000 statues, dressing many of them in costumes as fancy as her own and even adorning a favoured few with Rolex watches and Chanel bags.
The shrine welcomes a regular stream of punters who come to pray to the statues for good luck. A couple of years ago, one of them was rewarded with a big win on the Thai lottery and came back afterwards to pay his respects. Flush with his new fortune, he decided to renounce the usual offerings of incense and candles in favour of bringing along a troop of scantily clad female dancers from a local strip club, reckoning this would be more up Chuchok’s street. This got others thinking, and now aspiring millionaires regularly turn up to the shrine with groups of half-naked young women in tow, paying them to gyrate in front of the statues in the hope that Chuchok will grant their patrons’ wishes.
The shrine would have been remarkable enough even if I had never ventured upstairs. But when I did, I found something that must be a first even for Bangkok - in one single building Khun Khemika had managed to combine two of the city’s most popular institutions: shrine and spa.
But people turning up looking forward to a gentle mani-pedi or a relaxing back massage would be sorely disappointed. The speciality here is not preening or pampering, but rather giving each and every customer a good old slapping. In this land where physical beauty is a subject of worship in itself, and where cosmetic surgery is king, Khun Kehmika has come up with an all-natural option. She promises that her rigorous slapping “therapy” will revitalise and firm up key areas of the body and rejuvenate the skin, all without the need to go under the knife or shell out for expensive pills and potions.
I had a look at the menu and decided to go for the facial. Her assistant queued up some saccharine Thai pop on a stereo in the corner and Khun Khemika began to sway gracefully towards the spot where I was waiting curiously on a chair. As she reached me, and with no prior warning and the stealth of a panther, she delivered a mighty backhand wallop to my left cheek. She then proceeded to slap me firmly around my whole face, all the while continuing to shimmy in time with the music. This continued for a couple of minutes before she mixed things up with some rabbit punches, then finished off with a couple of chops to my shoulders and a hefty smack across my right ear.
I examined my face in the mirror afterwards, but couldn’t quite make out if it now looked different or not, though I was still seeing a few stars which didn’t help. But, yes, actually my cheeks were definitely rosier.
Khun Khemika’s slapping fame doesn’t come from her facials however, or even her buttock firming work. She is actually most renowned for a technique that she has reflected in her recent name change - she is now legally known as Khun Ying Tob-Nom, or Madam Boob Slapper.
By intensively slapping and kneading the female chest and surrounding areas in just the right manner, she claims to be able to push more fat into the breasts and so increase their size from anywhere between one and four inches.
I persuaded an open-minded female friend to give it a try.
Waiting outside the treatment room, I couldn’t help but wince at the sound of palm smacking into soft flesh, and wondered if my friend was ever going to talk to me again. But she emerged beaming and flushed a few minutes later. Yes, she said, it was certainly bracing and had stung a bit, but there was no lasting pain. And, amazingly, she reckoned that it had actually worked, swearing that her bra was now noticeably tighter. These kind of results explain why a steady stream of women, both Thai and foreign, make the journey up to this distant corner of Bangkok.
I had to wonder what Chuchok would think if he knew what was going on upstairs from his sacred shrine. After a moment’s consideration, I concluded he’d probably have a very big smile on his face.
