Wai Kru at Wat Bang Phra (The Sacred Tattoo Ceremony)

It's been a few years since I've had a Saturday off to go with my friend Noi on an adventure out of the city, but when I saw what he had planned for the first weekend in March, I knew I had to rearrange my schedule to be able to go along.

It was a sunny early morning, as I took the Skytrain to Krung Thonburi Station to meet up with Noi who had booked two big vans for our group.

Every year on the first Saturday in March, some 10,000 people travel to Wat Bang Phra in Nakhon Pathom, about 40 minutes outside of Bangkok, for the annual Wai Kru ceremony, the event that makes this otherwise quiet monastery so famous.

The Wai Kru Ceremony is related to the ancient pre-Buddhist practice of sak yant, traditional sacred tattoos believed to imbue the wearer with spiritual protection and magic powers. These tattoos are typically applied by monks or tattoo masters using a long-sharpened bamboo needle. The designs are drawn from ancient Khmer or Pali Sanskrit script, Buddhist prayers, and animist symbols.

Sak yant tattoos are especially popular as a form of protection with policemen, soldiers, taxi drivers, and others in dangerous professions. Usually, when you go to receive a sak yant at a temple (Wat Bang Phra is probably the most famous sak yant temple in all of Thailand), you consult with the monk or tattoo ajarn who read your astrology and "prescribe" a tattoo design for your back or arms; you don't get to choose your own design. The tattoos can cover your whole back, and often feature animals associated with specific blessings or powers.

Read more: The Blog of Michael Desrosiers: The Ajarn's Studio: Sacred Sak Yant Tattoos

The annual ceremony at Wat Bang Phra, known formally as the Wai Kru Sak Yant Festival, is a day when devotees return to the temple to honor their tattoo masters and recharge the spiritual power of their tattoos.

I'm not sure when the crowd began arriving, but it must have been before dawn. The temple was packed with people by the time we arrived and found a place to watch the proceedings from a bridge spanning the nearby canal.

The ceremony began promptly at 9:30 as the monks began praying and chanting mantras meant to refresh the spiritual powers of the tattoos. That's when it began to get really interesting.

It is believed that as the magic of the tattoos is recharged, the wearer can become possessed by the spirits evoked in the tattoo design. As the monks chanted, occasionally, someone would stand up from the crowd and begin charging towards the raised platform, acting as an animal - a monkey or elephant or whatever might have been depicted on their tattoo - all the while making loud, animalistic sounds. When they reached the platform, they were restrained by attendants guarding the monks, and the possessed individuals slumped down as they came back into themselves. All the while, the monks never broke their chanting.

This happened several times sporadically and without warning during the short ceremony, and it's the phenomenon that makes this Wai Kru so famous and so mysterious. Of course, the belief, rooted in ancient animism and shamanism, is that those affected are so overpowered by the recharged spiritual energies that they are literally possessed by the spirits. From a sociological or psychological perspective, perhaps it could be understood as a form of religious ecstasy, not unlike what you might see even in the United States amongst the more extreme Pentecostal sects (think snake handlers or speaking in tongues).

The ceremony was over much quicker than I had anticipated, and soon, the monks finished chanting and prepared to give a water blessing to the crowd.

Now, typically a monk uses a bundle of bamboo or reeds to dip into a consecrated bowl of holy water and fling the droplets over those seeking a blessing. However, the crowd in attendance at Wat Bang Phra for the Wai Kru ceremony numbered around ten thousand, and it would have been impossible to give everyone a blessing in the traditional way. Instead, the monks began spraying the crowd with hoses, making sure that everyone was able to receive the blessings of the holy water.

Songkran isn't for another month, but this felt like a preview!

The crowds began dispersing immediately after the water blessing as the ceremony concluded. In fact, I was amazed at how fast everyone cleared out!

Noi gave us about an hour to freely explore the temple grounds. There was a small market area set up alongside the canal, a chapel where the mummified body of one of the original monks who developed this monastery's tattoo tradition is displayed in a glass coffin, and the on-site studio where, for the price of a 20 baht offering and a box of cigarettes, the monks will administer the sak yant tattoos.

I grabbed an iced coffee and wandered around the canal area. Vendors were selling snacks and noodle dishes, and a sort of makeshift amulet market had sprung up as well. People had set up booths with trays of amulets, prayer beads, and Buddhist statues, and if you weren't interested in or brave enough to get a tattoo yourself, you could even buy a sak yant t-shirt instead.

It was nearly lunchtime when we returned to our van and drove on to the nearby Wat Lamphaya Floating Market. The old-school floating market is built out on piers over the sleepy Tha Chin river.

I had rice with crispy pork for lunch, then spent some time exploring the market. While most of the shops are built on a network of platforms and docks, there are still a handful of spots at the market where you can order your food right off of a small wooden boat just like in the old days.

For dessert, I decided to treat myself to something I hadn't had in a long time: lukchup!

Lukchup are little traditional Thai desserts made from mung bean pastes and agar-agar and shaped into various fruits and vegetables. They are mildly sweet with a nice, smooth texture, and I always really enjoy it when I have the chance to find them. It's an old-fashioned Thai dessert, and you don't usually come across lukchup outside of markets like this one.

The Blog of Michael Desrosiers: Lukchup

In the afternoon, it was time to head back to Bangkok, but not before stopping for one last coffee. No Thai Road trip is complete, after all, without visiting at least one trendy countryside cafe.

Memory Gallery is a cafe and restaurant located inside an old wooden house with a large yard. The surrounding land has been made to look like a sort of retro 1960s Thai village, complete with corner shops, street cars, and period-accurate signs and advertisements. Apparently, a lot of Thai music videos have been filmed here.

I don't usually have Saturdays off, but it was nice to have a chance to take one of these little day trips again. Hopefully I'll be able to do more of this type of activity in the future. It helps me feel more connected to Thailand, and also helps me break my routine and get away from my desk for a while.