NATTARIN SUKPRASERT giggles, tosses her hair, and smiles at the assembled media throng. She - who for about two more hours is in fact a he - is looking remarkably composed for someone who's just about to make medical history.
When she's finished divulging intimate details to journalists about growing up as a katoey - a transsexual - she'll be anaesthetised, swabbed down and then wheeled into an operating theatre for a sex change operation that will be broadcast live to a conference room where more than 50 of the world's top sex-change surgeons (plus a tag-team of journalists) will be gathered.
'Nervous? Yes, I am - but I'm also excited and happy,' says Nattarin, 27, a tour guide from Nakhon Phathom province on the outskirts of Bangkok. 'I have felt like a woman since I was eight or nine years old, so for me this is the natural next step.
'I have been saving money for a sex change operation since I graduated from university. My family totally supports me, and there's no doubt in my mind that I need to get rid of my male sex organs.'
Now, she'll have a financial head start for her new life. By agreeing to have the operation broadcast at the BNH Hospital's inaugural Sex Reassignment Surgery Workshop last week, Nattarin gets the procedure done for free.
It's not a procedure for the faint-hearted: in a gruelling three- to four-hour operation, Nattarin will undergo removal of the testicles (orchidectomy), creation of a vaginal tunnel (vaginoplasty), construction of a clitoris using the sensitive tissue from the head of the penis, which is kept attached to its main nerve (sensate clitoroplasty), construction of labia minora and majora (labiaplasty), removal of the penis (penectomy) and construction of a new urethral opening (urethroplasty).
