An old monk did it while I had my back facing him for what I thought was to be a simple blessing!

Something like a diamond-tipped metal scribing tool dipped in oil was used to ‘draw’ unintelligible gibberish all over my back.

It took a couple of weeks to heal.
Hopefully I didn’t get any diseases.

I am very interested in reprinting this blog in an American publication. Can you please contact me at the above email address?

Thank you!

Well I am a “foreigner” (as in, a Pom!) living in Thailand, and I have been to the Bang Phra temple many times now – and I got my tattoo there, so they definitely will tattoo foreigners. Also, my wife got her tattoo there, as did several of her (female) friends. The monks are not of course allowed to touch women, and so they wear rubber gloves! I think that’s basically a ‘dodge’ to get around the ‘rule’, but everyone seems OK with it.

Don’t worry about not being able to speak any Thai (although you might want to take along someone who does speak a little) – generally in Thailand the assumption is that foreigners won’t be able to speak more than “hello” and “thank you”, since Thai is a very hard language to speak if you are a speaker of a non-tonal language. The other assumption (which is both annoying and feels kind of condescending to those of us who have taken the time and trouble to try to learn) is that foreigners can not read/write Thai. So this means that in most places (road signs, shops etc.) you will see English written as well. This does NOT apply at places where foreigners tend not to go, so temples tend to have very little or no English.

One thing though – I would not recommend trying to get a tattoo actually at the festival, since there are many thousands of people there. The simple act of parking at 6:45AM was an ordeal, and the festival was slated to start at 09:30. I would recommend getting a tattoo a few days before the festival. Several people had obviously done this, as I saw quite a few fresh tattoos while there.

The festival does have some strong ‘energies’ for those who take such things seriously. Apart from the people being possessed by the animal spirits depicted in their tattoos, I saw some people whose tattoos were obviously not recent, which actually started spontaneously bleeding.

One final thing – we were not made aware of this before we went, but to show respect it is recommended to wear white at the festival.

I’m from Australia and would very much like to go to the festival next year to get tattooed. But do they tattoo foreigners?

I do Muay Thai here in Melbourne but I don’t speak any thai.

I’d be going with my girl friend, but the monk’s can’t Tattoo her, can they?

Thanks for the blog, good work,
Jesse.

Marco

I would not say brave – I would say trusting. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for! Once I found out, it was with some trepidation that I sat still and watched what was going on around me. The bit at the end was the most scary though, with the very real risk of being crushed or bashed hard.

But all in all, it was definitely worth it! A new experience.