Philippines— Tattoo scenes & cities

In the Philippines, the traditional tattoo, batok, is done by hand: a citrus thorn set on a handle is tapped with a small mallet, with a soot ink. In the Cordillera, among the Kalinga, a boy could earn his first tattoo after a successful raid, while women wore beauty motifs on their arms.

Around 1521, the chronicler Antonio Pigafetta described the Visayans as "painted all over". Under American administration, headhunting was banned, and the chest tattoos linked to it were the first to disappear. Today, in Buscalan, one elder still practises batok by hand and has passed it on to apprentices from her family.