BANGKOK, THAILAND - For people who believe they were born the wrong gender, the sex change they yearn for can be found easily in this crowded capital. The surgery is so common that it's advertised in bold print in newspaper classifieds.

Kate Monroe-Gillibrand, 50, was married for 20 years. She was Andrew then and fathered two children. Now in her hospital bed, days after surgery, she opens her pink satin nightgown and displays a flat bandage with a catheter. Her 73-year-old mother and her partner stand proudly at her side.

Perhaps the least strange twist in the tale of JonBenet Ramsey slaying suspect John Mark Karr, who was detained in Thailand last week, is that he reportedly was preparing to seek gender reassignment surgery in Bangkok.

A doctor has said Karr went to the Siam Swan Cosmetic Clinic and its branches in Bangkok to have his sideburns and hair under his chin removed with lasers. "He wanted to prepare himself to do a sex-change operation," Setthakarn Attakonpan said.

Operations are cheap and easy compared with those in the United States and Europe, and the city boasts some of the world's most renowned surgeons.

Preecha Tiewtranon has performed more than 3,000 male-to-female reassignment surgeries over nearly three decades. Most patients have traveled around the world for the treatment, having decided years ago, like Monroe-Gillibrand, that they could not live with the sex organs they were born with.

Preecha said Karr would have been turned away from his Aesthetic Institute, inside Bangkok's prestigious BNH Hospital. To qualify, applicants must have been living and dressing as a woman full time and must provide at least one recommendation letter from a psychiatrist.

Patients typically book appointments in advance from their home countries and already are women in every sense except anatomically, Preecha said.

The majority of foreign patients come from the United States, then Europe and Australia. For many, it's their first trip abroad and most travel alone. Preecha performs up to 200 surgeries a year himself and estimates about 1,500 procedures are performed annually in Thailand at his clinic and elsewhere with his students.

"The patients are so desperate to have this kind of operation," Preecha said. "The reason they come, No. 1, is because they can get good results and, No. 2, the price is low and they can afford it."

This is cache, read story here