I Investigated The World’s Oldest Tattoo Artist

Harry travels from Manila into the mountains of northern Luzon to reach Buscalan and meet Apo Whang-Od, the 106-year-old mambabatok who tattoos by hand with a thorn and ink. The trip is thrown together at a day’s notice with a taxi driver he talked into a twenty-hour round trip, a translator, a videographer and a friend, and takes two days via Baguio City and the Sagada rice terraces. The village is reached by a public zip line and a wet forty-minute hike. Once there the anticipation outlasts the event — the tattoo itself takes about two minutes. Whang-Od is tired over the Christmas period, so Harry is tattooed by both her and her granddaughter Grace, which he decides he prefers: it shows a nearly dead tradition being carried down a generation.

Obs: this video is sponsored by a laptop manufacturer and the product segments are woven throughout. Only the travel content is summarised here. The captions garble the tattoo price, so no figure is recorded.

Key moments

• [00:00] The premise: deep in the Philippine mountains a 106-year-old woman is keeping an ancient art alive, tattooing with nothing but a thorn and ink — and holding the record as the oldest person to appear on the cover of Vogue.
• [01:04] The crew, assembled at a day’s notice: a Filipino taxi driver Harry talked into a twenty-hour journey, a Tagalog translator, a videographer, and a friend.
• [02:07] Nine hours and forty-eight minutes’ drive to the northern mountains.
• [03:01] The driver on Manila: the traffic is the worst thing about it, and he spends eight to ten hours a day in it.
• [03:32] A warning about the pain — people have fainted or wet themselves, and some leave with tattoos unfinished.
• [04:07] They hadn’t booked anywhere to stay, and pick a three-star hotel off a review describing it as smelling funky with most on-site businesses closed.
• [05:47] Baguio City, the summer capital, and a giant lion statue nobody they ask can explain.
• [08:33] Still no room booked for the second night either.
• [10:04] Day two, and Harry learns there’s an hour’s hike ahead. He has no jacket and it’s cold.
• [10:39] Sagada, and the ancient rice terraces — irrigation systems built to cultivate the mountainsides.
• [11:12] The history behind the tattoos: these mountains isolated tribes from one another, which is why so many local languages emerged, and head-hunting was practised — rival tribes were killed and their heads displayed as a warning. The tattoos marked heroism for the men.
• [12:17] Arriving, they’re told several hundred people came that day — over 300 by one estimate — and the visitors are overwhelmingly Filipino rather than foreign.
• [13:22] The way in is a zip line, and not a tourist one: it’s public infrastructure, free, and used one at a time.
• [16:10] Rain, no coat, and a forty-minute walk with their guide Jusa, who does it in flip flops.
• [17:16] The succession question: two people can now carry the tradition on, Whang-Od’s granddaughters, where before there was only her.
• [17:51] Where the fees go — the municipality, according to their guide, with some scepticism from the crew about what happens to them.
• [19:29] They reach her, surrounded by around fifty people waiting.
• [20:34] Grace, the granddaughter, started learning at nine years old, and says it’s hard to learn.
• [21:06] The tool is a pomelo thorn — from the tree, not the fruit. Harry mentions his mother phoned to beg him not to get it.
• [21:41] The pain: he rates it seven out of ten, with roughly one tap in ten being sharp.
• [21:41] The surprise — it’s finished in about two minutes, not the hours they had all assumed.
• [22:18] Whang-Od is tired over the Christmas holidays, so the tattoo comes from both her and Grace. Harry says he ended up happier that way: it shows the tradition passing down the generations, and the opportunity it now brings the area.
• [23:29] His closing thought — the story is about resilience, connection and holding on to tradition in a changing world, and creators have a duty to tell it carefully.

Extracted pages

• Place: Buscalan
• Country: Philippines
• Person: Apo Whang-Od
• Tip: Travel with a local guide