Bangkok (part 4)

Some of you (mostly anyone who had to hear me psyche myself up about moving here) have heard me talk about wanting to visit Thailand and a specific thing that I wanted to do there.  Ever since I first heard of it, I’ve wanted to get a sak yant tattoo from a buddhist monk.

The unfortunate news is that many Thai monks won’t tattoo women. There is a belief that they aren’t allowed to touch women, but the truth is that they  are  permitted to touch a women, so long that it does not create lust. Many Monks decide that it is better to be safer than sorry in this regards, and if they do touch a female they use prayer cloth as an added layer.  So many monks won’t tattoo women so as not to have pictures taken and have to explain anything later.

But there are many ajarns(master) who will tattoo women, The word ‘Ajarn’ is used to describe a learned person… similar to the term Professor or Master.

Usually an Ajarn  is a former Monk that has taken their training in the Magical Art of Sak Yant and continued to provide the service to people after they no longer work within the Temple environment.

So, after looking into all this, I found a company called Where the Sidewalk Ends that arranges the appointment, picks you up gets you to the ajarn and translates everything to the ajarn for you.

My guide was named Sea, and she was delightful. She talked to me about the tradition of sak yant and the original purpose was to make warriors stronger or invincible during fights.  Now you still see warrior type sak yants on Thai boxers but not as much on everyday people.

She asked me to think about what I wanted from this, did I want to attract things to my life (better job, more money, more luck) or did I want to protect myself from things (evil spirits, bad luck).

The meeting started with a discussion of what I wanted, and given my previous conversation with Sea, I said that I wanted to be stronger in mind, spirit, and body.  I explained that the move to China had been hard for me and why we moved to China.  The ajarn sat for a minute and then started pulling out a notepad.

Sea explained that I was very lucky because the ajarn was making a custom sak yant for me.  There are several sak yants that are very common, like the five lines that Angelina Jolie has, or the 9 spires.

Then we got started. Sak yant tattoos used to be done with a bamboo spike, I’ve heard this is extremely painful because they have to poke so hard to get it to break the skin. Nowadays they use a metal spike instead.  I’m not going to lie, this was by far my most painful tattoo, but I felt like I really earned it in the end, and it was quick.

I tried to focus when the pain was the worst and think about being stronger in body and spirit-this was a good place to start!

My tattoo has the center oval which represents a suit of armor to protect me, the spire on top to keep my thoughts positive, the top four symbols are earth, fire, wind and water to keep me balanced, and the bottom five are the five names of Buddha.

After the tattoo, I went and met up with Alex and Mark (who had a great time getting a dental cleaning while I was doing this).

We ended up by accident going to an amazing mall. Forget Mall of America, this mall was huge! There are 5 levels of the mall, and each level had two or three floors.  We had a fantastic italian lunch (Alex ate subway instead), found an english bookstore,  had thai ice tea, and then we went to the movie theater. We decided that we should see a movie, and gave Alex the choice between Ready Player One and A Quiet Place.  He picked A Quiet Place as his first horror movie, absolutely no spoilers, but we all enjoyed it and talked about it for days afterwards- if you get a chance, go see it.

The movie theater had something like 26 theaters, multiple levels with a concession stand on each floor, an ICEE type thing for Alex, and the biggest sodas I’ve ever seen.

After the movie, we let Alex decide what he wanted (he picked McDonald’s- no accounting for taste) and we went to a fancy thai place inside the mall. The food was good, but not the best we had there.

I’ve got one more blog post about our last day in Thailand, including cat cafes and famous weekend markets.