Thai woman scores scorpion success

Kanchana Ketkeaw was stung nine times

She has spent 32 days and nights in a room with 3,400 scorpions and now Kanchana Ketkeaw is claiming a new world record.

"It was like being in a room at home, only with thousands of little friends," the 30-year-old Thai performance artist said after completing the feat.

Ms Kanchana suffered insomnia - but from bright lights, not her bedmates

She was stung nine times during her endurance challenge, but said the venom had little effect on her because she has developed immunity during seven years of performing with the lethal creatures.

She will now send reports and video footage of her month in a glass-walled room in a shopping centre south of Bangkok to be validated by the Guinness Book of World Records.

The existing record of 30 days and nights with 2,700 scorpions is held by a Malaysian woman.

Scorpion additions

Ms Kanchana fed the scorpions a mixture of raw egg and ground pork every day in her cell in the beach resort of Pattaya.

And while some scorpions died and had to be replaced, hundreds also gave birth during the month.

Ms Kanchana did lose sleep during her challenge, but it was the world outside her 12-square-metre (130-square-foot) chamber that was to blame.

I didn't get to go to anywhere, I didn't see the outside world, but I could bear it because I did this for the country

Kanchana Ketkeaw

"I usually go to bed pretty early, but the department store closes so late, so I couldn't go to sleep until the store closed," she said.

Every eight hours she was allowed a 15-minute break from her room - furnished with a television, table, chair, bed and toilet as well as the thousands of scorpions.

A crowd greeted her with rapturous applause as she emerged from her room, with scorpions dangling from her clothes, at the end of her challenge.

"I didn't get to go to anywhere, I didn't see the outside world, but I could bear it because I did this for the country," she said.