Tattoo tourism in the contemporary west and in thailand

Tattooing and travel are closely related: tattooing is by itself a ‘travelling culture’ (Clifford 1997) par excellence; as de Mello (2000: 14) points out, it is ‘an especially mobile aspect of culture … carried on the bodies of native people who migrate or on the body of travelers coming home from exotic places’; and ‘tattoo tourism’, as travel motivated by the desire to observe or participate in tattoo-related events, or to acquire a tattoo of a particular design or from a noted tattooist, is an emergent variety of ‘special interest’ tourism. Tattooing underwent a renaissance in the Western world in recent decades (Velliquette et al. 1998) as one variety of a broader spectrum of body-modification practices, and put forward a claim for recognition as an ‘art’ (Jeffreys 2000; Atkinson 2003; Nagle 2009). Michael Atkinson (2003: 4) reports that an estimated ‘15 to 20 per cent of North Americans are now tattooed’. Tattooing is increasingly penetrating mainstream, middle-class, white Western society (de Mello 2000: 2), though it continues to signify a ‘(symbolic) rejection’ of that society (ibid.: 14; parentheses in original). In the process, tattooing symbols were de-coupled from their traditional meanings and associations with particular low-class and semi-deviant social groups (ibid.: 4), and became expressions of aesthetic predilections and tokens of personal identity. Tattoos have been transformed from ‘standardized, formulaic designs executed by craftsmen to custom-designed, fine art images executed by professionally trained artists’ (de Mello 2000: 4). Older, conventional designs are unpopular among contemporary tattooists; they tend to search for novel designs, and to assign tattoos with ‘new meanings derived from non-Western culture, giving them an exotic, primitive flavor’ (de Mello 2000: 4; see also Turner 1999). Looking for distinction, tattooists tend to ‘search the planet for cultures whose designs have not yet been discovered’ (de Mello 2000: 14). Among the non-Western countries, one of the principal destinations of that search is Thailand. The revival of tattooing was accompanied by a proliferation of tattoo-related events, particularly in the USA. National and international tattoo conventions, started in the 1970s, have recently proliferated. In the first eight months of 2011there were close to 270 tattoo conventions and exhibitions around the globe, most of them inthe USA, but also in many European and Latin American, and some Asian countries. Tattoo conventions are a highly commercialised business, with glitzy advertisements on the Internet, and a variety of activities, attracting large audiences. The larger ones, such as the ‘Biggest Tattoo Show on Earth’ in Las Vegas, and the National Tattoo Convention, feature tattoo shows, exhibitions and contests in a wide range of categories, such as the best black-and-grey tattoo, the best portrait, the most patriotic and the most unusual tattoo. Tattoo artists put up their booths during such events, offering their original designs to visitors. Such conventions bring together people from widely different social backgrounds. One of the leading researchers of the tattoo scene reports that ‘White Americans, middle-classand working-class, from the cities, suburbs and small towns - all wearing tattoos borrowed many times over from many different cultures - gather once a year to show off their tattoos and to honor the best’ at the National Tattoo Convention (de Mello 2000: 2). However, despite its growing significance, ‘tattoo tourism’ has elicited little, if anyinterest on part of tourism researchers. Ted Pothemus makes an important theoretical opening by pointing out that ‘in tattoo conventions it is now commonplace for different tattooists to put up stalls where anyone … can witness the act of someone being tattooed … Thus have some purely intimate rituals become more openly public and therefore performative - the experience [of the tattooee] transformed by the presence of the audience’ (Pothemus 1998: 85). The performative character of tattooing, and of events associated with it, however, has not been further explored by tourism researchers, notwithstanding the current interest in performativity in tourism (e.g. Knudsen and Waade 2010). Asian countries, in some of which tattooing has been a common practice in the past, became popular goals for Western tattooists in search of distinctive designs. In response, countries such as South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand staged their own international tattoo conventions. I shallhere present a case study of Thailand, as the leading destination of Asian tattoo tourism. In contemporary Thailand, ‘the marking of the body for magical reasons, for protection, strength, influence and invulnerability is still a living tradition’. Such tattooing ‘is accompanied by the uttering of magical formulae; the tattooer may rib the client’s skin and blow sharply upon the markings in order to impart power, and … there is a … ceremony intended to raise the full forces which slumber in the design’ (Terwiel 1977: 6). Tattooing is a magic ritual, and the tattooists often claim to be in a trance or possessed by a spirit during their work (Hoskin 1993: 18-19). The figurative motifs on magical tattoos ‘are most commonly animals … [or] figures from classical Thai mythology, such as the monkey warrior Hanuman [or the mythical ascetic thaumaturg reushi] …’ (Hoskin 1993: 19-20). The most popular animals are monkeys, eagles, dragons, tigers, lions, Nagas (mythical serpents) and a double-tailed, luck-bringing lizard. The tattoos are accompanied by magic spells (katha) and symbols, written in khom (Khmer) letters and often arranged in complex, ‘cabalistic’ diagrams (yan [yantra]). It should be noted that tattooing is not a Buddhist custom, though it is in some temples performed by monks. However, traditional designs do not usually include Buddha images, or images of Hindu deities, popular in Thailand, such as Brahma, Indra or Ganesha. As elsewhere in Asia, tattoos in contemporary Thailand are ‘especially popular among people whose work putsthem close to danger, for example, soldiers, policemen and taxi-drivers’ (Otaganonta 1988: 46), and, one should add, members of the underworld. Traditional Thai tattooists used ‘magical homemade dyes’ and ‘simple equipment: rattan thorns; several sewing needles … embedded in a wooden handle; a pointed brass engraver; or needles crafted from nails’, and applied these implements manually. In contrast, ‘tattooists who cater to the international community … use imported electric equipment … and hygienic, colorful dyes’ (Manager 1991). Traditional tattoos are dispensed primarily by old-time tattooing masters, and specialist Buddhist monks. The Buddhist temple presently best known for its designs is Wat Bang Phra, in Nakhom Phathom province in central Thailand; its late, highly venerated abbot introduced the temple’s specific tattooing style. This consists mostly of images of various animals and of the thaumaturg rueshi, densely surrounded by mantras, tattooed primarily on the back (see Figure 23.1). Several monks continue to impart the abbot’s designs, with electric tattooing guns, to devotees from around the country. Visitors are permitted to observe the process, turning the tattooee’s painful experience into a performance, as Pothemus (1998) pointed out. Wat Bang Phra also offers arm tattoos to foreigners, but is less prepared to let them have the complex designs executed in the temple on Thai devotees’ backs.