A Bowl of Stupid

I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. … I hope.

My intent upon initially leaving the States way back when was to engage in what I then called “The Bowl of Stupid World Tour” — a tour that started out in Singapore, made various pit-stops in Indonesia, Thailand and other bright and shiny destinations throughout Southeast Asia. From there, the tour made an unexpected stop in Boston, and would continue on through Sri Lanka and India, and eventually lead to various stops through Australia.

All of that was accomplished — and more.

The tour was also supposed to expand into and through the Pacific — to places like Guam, Palau, and Fiji. But somehow I never got there. Instead, like many people, I got trapped by the allures of Asia and, for the past 3-plus years, I wound up living in Bangkok, then Bali, and then back to Thailand — which is where I find myself today.

My intention upon returning to Bangkok was to make a life for myself here — in the past six (6) months, I’ve spent countless hours looking for work, making new friends, and networking with the Bangkok business community, all in the hopes that I would be able to find a paying job sufficient enough to allow me to stay here, perhaps indefinitely. Indeed, for all its faults and quirks and despite the fact that I constantly have to defend it to my friends back in the States who have a distorted view of the place, I love Bangkok very much. I really do. As do I love mostly all of Southeast Asia, the Buddhist way of thinking, and all the lovely people I’ve met here who have been gracious enough to let me into their lives, however briefly.

But like most things, permanence here is apparently not for me. My destination (if there is one), at this point seemingly lies elsewhere. I’ve not been able to find a decent job that would allow me to maintain even the minimalist lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed. So I’m leaving Thailand, and Asia — most likely never to return, except perhaps as a tourist.

I really don’t mean to come across as a drama queen. But my experiences here in Asia over the past several years have altered me in ways I previously thought unimaginable. As a result, the thought of leaving Asia for good is obviously a bit daunting. The world out here is truly wondrous — with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. And I am also sorry to see this, yet another stage of my life, exiled to the relative oblivion of memories.

In contrast to that melancholy, I am also optimistic, since I’m returning to the original path that has been lost to me — I’m finally heading out into the Pacific. And I’m also returning to the practice of law. And I’m also heading back to the States (in a manner of speaking).

Less than two (2) days from now, I’m moving to American Samoa, the southernmost territory of the United States, with a total land mass about the size of Washington D.C., and a total population of approximately 70,000. I go there with the promise of a paying job, decent surf, tropical island breezes, a lush island paradise and, most importantly, relative peace and tranquility.

As usual, we’ll see how it plays out …

(Yours truly — sporting the latest)

สักยันต์ – Sak Yant; Sak – meaning “to tap” or, “to tattoo”, and Yant, meaning “Yantra”. Originally derived from the Sanskrit word “YANTRA”.

Through some sort of Google ‘search engine magic’, this site — and, in particular, the posts HERE, HERE and HERE — has become some sort of pseudo-authority on the sacred Bhuddist art of ‘Sak Yant’ tattooing.

The bad news is that, as I stated in the comment section of one post:

Just to set the record straight, I pretty much know jack-shit about EVERYTHING.

My admitted stupidity notwithstanding, people STILL continue to be directed here by the search-engine gods in their quest for knowledge about Sak Yant. My apologies, everyone.

The good news, however, is that I too know know how to use Google to find ACTUAL authorities on the subject of Sak Yant tattoos and have posted links in my above-referenced posts to ACTUAL sak yant authories. Moreover, one of my best friends in Bangkok actually did a video piece for the Bangkok Post (see below) about Arjan Noo, one of the best know Say Yant artists in the — having given Angelina Jolie her well-publicized sak yant tattoos.

The other good news is that there has also been some faily interesting information posted by visitors in the commentary of my posts, including this latest comment by ujalakali:

I have a sak yant tattoo and I am a woman. I made a kind of pilgrimage to bkk to get it done. actually, i would have gone to anyone, but ended up at arjan noo’s to get it done in the belief that women cannot be touched by monks–which arjan noo is not.

later a westerner with plentiful sak yant told me that some bkk temples will put sak yant on women.

here is my experience:
I only have one and was not allowed to choose it. this is important! i think you often dont really get to choose. you tell them what is going on with you (i was on my way to afghanistan so i recieved the protection yant) and they give you the one that is best. also, i felt that they strongly encouraged putting the yants in the classic places. AJ’s is in the normal place for a protection tattoo. they put mine in a slightly different place. they were very clear that they were not going to do anything on my lower back, even though i didn’t ask for such a thing. this was a clear rule.

one final thing–this is for real. everything changed for me after recieving the tattoo. come correct.

This is all I really know, that which is my experience–i dont know about the other yants and dont know what the experience is for men.

i have a question if anyone knows– are there rules explicit for women? as far as i can see the rules are mostly for men, so i just try to stay on the right path as i see it. but if there are ladies rules, i would love to know them! thanks!

As I mentioned in those comments:

… it’s my understanding that the ‘rules’ on Sak Yant (in general) is that you cannot have an actual image of the holy Buddha anywhere on your body, and that the yants themselves are not to be placed anywhere beneath the waistline (which, for obvious reasons, is considered unclean — that’s also the reason monks are not allowed to touch women, as they are alleged to be unclean … sorry girls, I’m just the messenger.

That being said, I can also advise all of you fellow tattoo enthusiasts (read: freaks) that obviously Arjan Noo himself does sak yants for women (although when I went for one, he charges foreigners — ‘falangs’ — about US$2,000.00 per, and presumably more if you’re a celebrity).

Further, there was also a Malaysian woman behind me to get inked at Wat Bang Phra when I got my first sak yant. I assume she eventually got one there, although I didn’t stick around to confirm it, and it’s my understanding that women there are only allowed to get ‘invisible tattoos’ made with vegetable oil instead of ink.

Again, what the hell do I know, right?

So for those of you still interested in more info, you can go to the appropriately named Sak-Yant.com — it has just about everything you may want to know on the subject.

And who can (or want to learn to) read Thai, here’s a link to Arjan Noo’s website — actually, there are a bunch of links there written in English also.

Last, but not least, there’s this: the VERY BEST news story you’ll ever see about the subject — where my buddy, Desho Bernard of the Bangkok Post (a.k.a. Guru Bangkok), went to do a story on Arjan Noo and got tattooed instead:

That is all … freaks.

For anyone paying attention, you may recall that several months ago, I got a Sak Yant tattoo (Khmer geometric tattoos, meant to protect the wearer, originally as protection during war/fighting times).

That first tattoo was the Yant Gao Yord (or ‘Nine Spires Yanthra’), which represents the Nine Peaks Mount Meru; the sacred mountain in the centre of the Universe, with the four Continents around it.

Well, today I went to get the second in a series of Sak Yant tattoos (while I’m sill here in Bangkok). Admittedly, I did not go to Wat Bang Phra this time, instead getting the tattoo from a local Bangkok artist who trained as a monk but no longer practices. As such, I’ll need to get this Yant blessed (or ‘charged’) by a Bhuddist preist when I return back here to Thailand in a couple months.

This time I got a Yant Paed Tidt, which is representative of the 8 directions of the Universe and has a kata to protect you in each direction in which you may travel. Mine is a variation, but it looks similar to the one shown and described at the Sak Yant Website, here.

I’ll try to have a picture up in a couple days.

Another birthday here and gone. I don’t feel like writing anything except to get the attention whore ‘birthday post’ out of the top spot on this blog. So I’ll just show anyone interested (i.e., Slouchmonkey) a clip about the new surfboard I got in Bali last month, which I plan to put to good use on whatever smaller waves I come across in the Pacific.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get another tattoo.

Okay, for anyone interested — here are a couple of pictures of the new Sak Yant tattoo I got yesterday.

And with respect to the question posed by Girl With Curious Hair as to sanitary issues — although TK has welcomed me to the wonderful world of tetanus … personally, I’m not all that concerned about the needle (read: spear) they used for the tattoo, I’m pretty sure the snake venom took care of anything bad.

Plus, according to the latest news, now I’ve got to worry about the communist rebels that killed a couple cops in the small Philippino surfing/fishing villiage that I’m leaving for in about 6 hours — so any potential blood infection may be the least of my concerns.

So I’m feeling pretty stoked right now. I did something today that officially qualifies as being one of the coolest things I’ve done since moving to Thailand:

I took a trip to the most famous temple in the world for ‘Yant tattooing’ — Wat Bang Phra, in Nakhon Chaysri, Nakhon Pathom Province, Thailand (it’s said a tattoo from this temple can protect from danger or even death — and given my track record, you can see why I went there).

For those who are unaware (myself included, to some extent):

Sak yant (Thai: สักยันต), also called yantra tattooing, is a form of sacred tattooing practiced in Southeast Asian countries, including Cambodia and Thailand. Sak yant are normally tattooed by Buddhist monks or Brahmin priests.

The Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple, about 30 miles west of Bangkok, is one of the most highly esteemed locations for Sak Yant. Dozens of monks and master artists, who have spend years perfecting the art, can be found there. Many people — including two (2) monks I wound up giving a ride back to the Bangkok bus station — travel from far reaches of Thailand and Cambodia just to get ‘inked’ by the monks there.

I don’t yet have a picture of the new tattoo (located on my upper shoulders, extending up the length of my neck to the base of my skull), but I’ll post one as soon as I get the chance.

The experience was kinda trippy in and of itself — a local friend of mine recently got a yant tattoo from Arjan Noo, the preist here in Bangkok that received worldwide fame for giving Angelina Jolie the yant designs adorning her back. So, together with a friend who was here yesterday visiting from the States, I decided to go and get inked by this guy.

The only problem? Now that Ajarn Noo is famous, a blessed tattoo from him costs about US$1000.00 (ONE THOUSAND U.S. DOLLARS) — which translates into three surfboards, for the rest of us. Naturally, we were inclined to say ‘fuck it’ to that high-fallutin’ shit.

Just the same, we still wanted to look at getting inked. So we wandered over to the shop on the Sukhumvit that I got my last design done, where the artist told us that we could also get Sak Yant done at the sacred Wat Bang Phra — where Noo apparently trained — for the equivilent of US$5.00 (FIVE U.S. DOLLARS).

Okay, let’s review … admittedly talanted yet incredibly over-hyped ‘tattoo artist to the stars’ — versus — true Buddhist monks practicing a sacred craft, hand crafted traditional artistic designs, ‘blessed’ protective mantras on me for all time, no celebrities, no bullshit, … and oh yeah, for only Five Bucks?

That’s a pretty tough call, right? Yeah, that’s what I said too.

Unfortunately, my friend left last night, so she couldn’t get any ink done. So I made solo arrangements for the trip to the temple instead.

Despite having been told, and reading online accounts (the Wikipedia account was particularly accurate) about the Wat, I STILL had trouble at first figuring out how the whole process works (c’mon, it IS bloody Thailand). However, I was lucky enough to run into 2 monks who spoke decent English and helped me along. The pair had travelled 250 kilometers from their temple near Cambodia for the day, just to get tattooed at the Wat.

Thanks to them, I was also lucky enough to be admitted into the group of people waiting for Hiwong Pi Nan, one of the younger masters to come up in recent years, who has developed a rather large following of disciples since his tattoos are finely detailed and absolutely beautiful.

Before entering the temple, you must buy flowers and cigarettes (about US$2.00) as an offering to Buddha. These offerings are given to the monk, and then ‘recycled’ for the next batch of devotees, with the money used to support the Wat. The tattoos are done in groups of about 15-20 people. When the previous group is complete, the monk blesses the next batch of offerings and the next group of people.

When tattooing, the monk dips a slender 15 inch double-pronged metal rod (think barbeque skewer) into a dark inky liquid (said to contain a combination of coloring agent, palm oil, herbs, and snake venom). He then repeatedly, rhythmically, and quickly punctures the skin. Small dots of ink and blood appear, and with repeated applications, the small dots eventually form an overall design.

For me, the precess was far more painful than the modern machine-needle tattooing (or even the bamboo needling) I’ve had done in the past. As such, I eventually resorted to rythemic breathing and chanting mantras to focus out the pain. It helped for a bit … until I could hear/feel the metal rod literally ‘POPPING’ in and out of the skin of my upper neck — at which point, I kinda lost concentration and started giggling (which I think may be a ‘no-no’ in a Buddhist temple, I’m not sure).

After finishing, the monk say a quick prayer and blows of the tattoo. You then go to the next temple building, where the temple’s master himself also blesses the tattoo (and, in my case, he also ‘topped-up’ the pre-existing “OM MANI PADME HUM” Sanscrit prayer mantra I already have on my upper back).

And that was that.

Honestly, I feel incredible right now. I mean, really freakin’ good!!

Usually, I come out after getting a new tat feeling kinda worn out. But for some reason, that’s not the case today.

Is it the protective blessing placed on me through the new tattoo? Who knows. I don’t particularly believe in any of that religious mumbo-jumbo, but there are more things in Heaven and Earth, dear Horatio, so you never know …

Or it could just be the mutherfuckin’ snake venom.

Anyhoo, I’ll post picks of the new ink as soon as I get a chance (hopefully before I leave for the Philippines tomorrow).