The oldest tattoo artist in the world, and the first female tattoo artist in the Philippines, Whang-Od isn’t so much an inspiration as an institution
It’s an exercise in both pain management and lung capacity. A nauseatingly serpentine ascent by coach is punctuated with a vertiginously steep hour’s long hike through wet rice paddies, sending day trippers’ flip-flopped feet slipping on the worn down stepping stones as one of the tribe’s 76 gazelle-like local guides waits patiently ahead. There’s no phone signal for smartphones, wifi doesn’t exist, and villagers communicate across the hillside via antennae-d walkie-talkies. “We know we live in a different era from Manila and Cebu or countries like England and America,” says resident Richard Weber, who was born and raised in the village in the 1970s. “I think it says a lot about Whang- Od if this many people have heard about her, even though we’re this cut off.”
Indeed, with white hair tied back in a black “tribal streetwear” headscarf and solid silver earrings shaped to mimic the female reproductive system, Whang- Od may be less than five feet tall, but her reputation carries weight. Filipino tourists travel from as far afield as Mindanao and Palawan to meet the most famous nonagenarian in South East Asia, and international backpackers clutching British and Brazilian passports spend thousands of dollars as they structure whole holidays around their quest for tribal ink.
“I’ve been wanting to come here for about three years,” says Daniel, 22, from France, as he sits on a smooth bamboo bench outside one of the village’s seven makeshift tattoo studios. “I first read about Whang- Od and her tattoos on a travel blog, and then I started to see more and more posts about the village on social media, and I thought ‘Man, I must visit this place.’” He already has a couple of other inkings, which he got in Paris and Toulouse. “But I almost wish I’d waited for this to be my first. I love how much Thanks to the tattoo artists, tourists make their way up the mountain every day and give residents the chance to earn extra income through accommodations and selling of handcrafted objects; WhangOd is proud of the new generation of girls continuing the tradition