[Sharon]

Every night in the Thai capital, dozens of private ambulance teams roam the streets and alleys of the sprawling mega-city of south-east Asia to collect the injured and the dead. The city has an average of four violent crimes and three fatal road accidents reported each hour of the night; there is no shortage of work.

Thailand does not have a state-run emergency system, and most hospitals lack rescue vehicles and emergency room resources. For the most part, the ambulance teams are funded by private foundations, based in Bangkok’s Chinatown, which operate on donations.

The main ambulance squads, such as the Poh Teck Tung Foundation and Ruam Katanyu Foundation, are in fierce competition. In fact, body-collecting in Bangkok is a brisk and profitable business.

For every corpse the teams deliver to a hospital, they are paid 500baht, or around $16; for the injured, they sometimes receive generous donations from the victim’s relatives.

The body collectors are mostly young men, either volunteers or full-time employees, who consider the hunt for bodies a nightly adventure. They start their shift at around 9pm, waiting in the parking lots of petrol stations and fast-food joints in downtown Bangkok.

They listen intently to police scanners, local traffic reports and the radio chatter of the city's legions of taxi and tuk-tuk drivers. When they hear of pile-ups, altercations - or any of the city’s ever-present accidents - they leap into their vehicles and speed to the scene.

After midnight, when the rowdy Bangkok bars begin to empty, the hunt intensifies.

By the body collectors' reckoning, most of their work is caused by road accidents, murders, suicides and drowning victims fished from Bangkok's many canals.

9:49pm: An emergency team chats at its base before beginning the night shift


10:05pm: An emergency van speeds to an accident in central Bangkok


10:31pm: In one of the night's many violent crimes, the body of a local politician - allegedly shot by a rival - is delivered to the hospital


10:39pm: A medic with a private ambulance team waits for the next call


10:44pm: A severely injured motorcycle driver is rushed to hospital


11:36pm: The emergency team prepares to leave the scene of a deadly accident


12:33am: A team carries the body of a young man. After he lost his job and his wife left him, he committed suicide, his family said


12:29am: A severely injured motorcycle driver is rushed to hospital


12:37am: The motorcycle driver is secured to a stretcher and equipped with a neck brace en route to medical facilities


12:45am: Bangkok police examine the site of a second motorcycle accident, this one fatal


12:51am: Sisters of the victim of a fatal motorcycle accident cry at the scene, as ambulance workers arrive


12:53am: A drunken man is treated after hurting himself


1:35am: Police investigate the scene of a murder in which a cook at a Chinese restaurant was allegedly stabbed to death by a plate-washing kitchen hand


3:34am: After the team dealt with a taxi driver murdered in a gang killing, and the corpse of a man who died from a heart attack, they treat a young woman for a head wound, sustained in a motorbike collision


3:34am: After bandages are applied, the young woman waits for to be taken to hospital


3:44am: After removing him from the tangled wreckage of a car accident, the body of a young man is laid out at the scene of the crash


5:53am After a long night, the emergency team waits for dawn, and the end of their shift

[blancadon]

This is where one kind of pointers originate. Nice find Sharon!

[MeMyselfandI]

Interesting...thanks

[Oswald2001]

I would guess that there are too many incidents for the cops to properly investigate many of them.

[Kelseecat65]

That one guy looks like David Carradine

[dogleg818]

Great post, thanks....

[durt]

They're busy!
Wonder what the pay is like?

[vipersna]

This reminds me of a thai movie called 'Unbelievable' which is a documentary style movie that follows one such team. very interesting movie.

[wujuan]

there was documentarycalled taboo which talks about things like this.

[Jere]