How to Get To Whang-Od Tattoo Village — My First Tattoo Journey [June 2023]
Want Detailed Instructions on How to Get to Whang-Od Tattoo Village in Buscalan, Philippines?
For clear instructions on how to get to Whang-Od in Buscalan Village, go to the bottom of this article and view this Google map on how to get to Whang-Od tattoo village from Baguio.
3 Dots for a Lifetime — My Whang-Od Tattoo Story
I’m shaking. Scared. F*cking nervous. I’m sitting on a plastic chair watching chickens dance on the dirt floor in a hut in Buscalan, Philippines while in front of me, a legend taps a pomelo fruit needle into a fellow tourist’s foot covered in 3 ink dots.
I keep thinking back to my Mormon upbringing: your body is a temple. No tattoos. There’s a lot to unpack there, but at 18 years post leaving the LDS church, I can say that there are only inklings of guilt and shame in my amygdala. I can manage.
I watch a tourist wince as the legendary traditional tattoo artist, Maria Whang-Od Oggay, Vogue cover model, keeps tapping the needle in and out of his foot. There are 3 others in front of me, waiting just like me to get their eternal three dots jabbed into their dermis. My name, Foreigner, shows my fate on the whiteboard behind the gangster-clad OG.
I feel weird. She’s been kicking out tattoos one after another like a machine in a factory. At 300 pesos each, I calculate that her hourly rate is like $120, even better than most consultants in my field! I do a bit more mental math to avoid thinking about how crazy it is what I’m doing and what I’ve done to get here in this plastic chair.
Three dots. Thirty-three years old. Three accidents on the way up to the village. This is my first tattoo. This is how I got to Buscalan for a once-in-a-lifetime story. This is my Whang-Od Tattoo story.
The Journey Begins in Baguio
I tell you this not to scare you, but it might anyway. The journey from Baguio to Buscalan is fraught with trouble, horrible information, landslides, and dangerous roads. It’s not for the faint of heart, and I almost died.
Part of my goal here in telling this story is to give people an accurate description of exactly how to get to see Whang-Od. To get to Buscalan from Baguio, I read that I first needed to get to Bontoc. Bontoc is a small town on the way to Buscalan that is approximately 4–6 hours from Baguio, depending on how the bus driver feels. It’s cold. You don’t need AC. The windows are wide open allowing fresh mountain air to travel freely into the bus. I plan my trip accordingly.
In Baguio, I get to the D’Rising Sun Bus terminal and ask one of the stall people what times the bus to Bontoc leaves. They told me 3 bus times from Baguio to Bontoc:
- 6 am ← I should have taken this one.
- 7:30 am ← My lazy butt takes this one.
- 9 am ← This might have been the same outcome as 7:30 (read below)
I arrive at 6:50 am, ready to take the 7:30 am bus, and I immediately regret something. Sh*t, I didn’t get enough money from the ATM. Scrambling, I ask the nearest bus employee where is the closest ATM. They say it’s in town, a 10-minute walk away. Damn. I need to hurry. I grab a taxi, get dropped off, and poof, it seems like every damn ATM in the world conveniently hids itself from me at that moment. (Yes, cue the damn Alanis Morissette). Luckily, I find a Metrobank, grab 8,000 pesos, and start running back to the bus. I make it back by 7:29, a bit sweaty, but with surely enough cash strapped to my chest in my traveler’s pouch.
There’s a quick last call, a defeated denied request for permission to grab a snack, a 5-minute wait while I hate the person who told me there wasn’t enough time to grab a snack 10 meters away, and then we start to move forward. There aren’t a lot of people on the bus now, but I guess that we will pick up people on the way. I’m right. We pick up a lot of people.
We start the journey. Little did I know that in 4 hours I would be directing traffic on a narrow mountain road begging people not to fly around the blind corner like a fated car did. The cold air blows into the open windows, and I try playing my Nintendo Switch Tears of the Kingdom game until I start feeling nauseous. It’s nap time. I’m tired, and I’m hoping the road will be smoother than these bumpy city roads.
I’m wrong.
A Flat Tire & Happy Mountain Blind Corner Car-Bus Accident
A weird sound protrudes from my side of the bus, but I can’t see what’s causing it. But guessing by what’s going on, it’s known. Flat tire. The bumpier last 2 minutes in the driving make it pretty obvious. This causes us an unexpected 1-hour delay, but given that we stopped three times to fix it, I’m not kidding, it turned into a much larger delay than what I think an average bus f*ck up would cost.
But that wasn’t the only delay… Cue further mountain-death-road delay.
Resting semi-peacefully on my backpack huddled into the empty seat next to mine, I immediately felt a tiny thwack causing the bus to stop in its tracks while we were rounding a corner. The thwack was followed by a couple of gasps, an awkward silence, and then people confusedly gathering their belongings and getting off the bus while peeking off to the left side. I was semi-groggy, but peeking out the bus window, I see a 4-Runner-looking-like car pretty crushed into the back left tire area of our bus. I go into Advanced First Aid Wilderness mode that I’d learned back in 2015 in Costa Rica.
Now I know that when accidents and crises happen, people get stupid. By stupid, I mean that they just focus on themselves and don’t think big picture about other threats also around them. However, I’m pretty good in these situations, so for me, my process was:
- Let me go check on the people in the other car.
- Okay… They’re a little banged up, but they’re okay. No need to give them any immediate medical attention.
- We need to slow down traffic so we don’t get more cars piled up onto this blind corner accident.
- No one else is directing traffic. No cops. No one. No bus employees. Crap.
- Okay. Let’s get the people to not stand in the blind corner. Check.
- Okay. Let’s get up to the top of the hill before the blind corner and start slowing down traffic.
So that’s what I did. For the next 1.5 hours, I was up on that hill slowing down cars speeding like hell down that mountain road, getting them to slow down. And you know what. I was successful! No additional blind-corner-car-pilups! It’s too bad that I wasn’t able to take pictures because I really was trying to avoid a pileup on that mountain road. No time for pictures!
Another bus eventually came and picked us up, and we began our journey again down the hell path. That road… My gosh… What a death trap country road experience.
Too Late For Going Up
I arrived in Bontoc at about 5 pm, 4 hours after what I was expecting, still a bit shaken up from the accident. I ask around and soon realize that I’m WAY too late to go up to Buscalan from Bontoc. No one even considers taking me. Okay. It’s hotel time.
There are very few hotel options in a place literally called Mountain Province, Philippines. No Agoda. No Hotels.com. So… I walked down the street and did the old school asking of “Hey, where’s a good place to stay in town?” People sent me to a (~$18) 1,000 pesos/night place on the main street, and I immediately said yes knowing that better options probably didn’t exist further down the road.
After a pretty crappy pizza parlor that was rated highly on Google (you can tell that I’m still hurt by their lack of quality), I sang some karaoke with some people at a random bar across the street from my hotel and called it a night. My night in Bontoc was unexpected, but I ended up making the best out of a crappy accident and flat tire delay situation.
Let’s Try a 7 am Journey, Again
A quick breakfast, and I’m out to the jeepney station riding a tricycle (pronounced funny with 2 syllables: trais-kle). I have no idea what to expect, but I meet up with a group of people huddled around a jeepney chewing beetle nut just like how I saw in Micronesia when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer there. Now, beetle nut is not very common in Manila or Cebu City, but my gosh, these were just like Micronesians! The veracity and umph at which they approached chewing was soo deja-vu to my Peace Corps times, I felt like I was just back home in Pohnpei.
I made friends quickly with my fellow passengers. Why? Because I knew that they were the only hope that I would get dropped off at the right place! They were quite lovely, and one man was actually really talkative and asked me a lot about America and was quite curious about Texas. Needless to say, he and I got off to a good start, and the jeepney began heading out of Bontoc for Bugnay/Buscalan at 7:30 am.
Now I know that getting into a bus accident is the ultimate form of this road is unsafe, but holy crap, this road was even more dangerous than the first! Holy sh*t. Landslide City where Mr. Get Run Off The Road was Mayor and Mrs. Accidental Blind Corner made a repeat appearance as City Councilwoman from the first road. Eeks. It. Was. Scary. And, AND, the driver was hell-bent on making Steve McQueen jealous of his speed.
So driving along, guess what. No accident! Yay! But, but, we did manage to get a flat tire because, surprise, we had much much much too many people riding the jeepney. Add + 30 minutes to the trip time, but it’s no biggie. We start out again, and eventually, I get dropped off at the Bugnay Convenience Store, the place where I ride a motorbike to go to Buscalan.
A young man says he can take me up to the starting point of Buscalan for 150 pesos, and I agree. He even stops at the infamous road sign and takes a selfie with me!
Checkin Time
From what I read online, I was to expect nothing of a system going to Buscalan. Pure chaos and a crazy hike up the mountain on a trail with no signs. That’s what the bloggers I read before made it seem like. I would be hiking for an hour, begging people alongside the road for a place to stay and for information on how to get to Buscalan.
That was not reality. It was actually surprisingly organized.
The check-in counter had pretty good information on what to expect, how much things would cost, and who would take me to the village. I was told that to stay the night would cost 400 pesos, a guide (required) would cost 1,000 pesos for 24 hours, and that the registration fee to come to Buscalan was 100 pesos, or was it 150? I can’t remember exactly. I just remember going, “Woah… That blogger that I screenshotted their instructions on how to get to Buscalan did NOT tell me this!”
They assigned me to a tour guide named Landy who claimed to not speak English well. Lies, oh humble lies! She was kind and humble, and her English was great! She started trying to convince me to get a tattoo, of which I wasn’t yet fully convinced. I just knew that I wanted to see Whang-Od give a tattoo, but I didn’t know if the recipient would be me yet!
We hiked down a ravine, over a small creek, and then up the other side of the ravine with minimal breaks. It was a great little exercise I must say, and my calves were pretty tight for the next 3–4 days since I have been skipping leg day for a while. Shame on me!
Once we got into the village, I realized that this was basically Salapwuk, Pohnpei Micronesia. Same jokes. Same kids running everywhere. Same concrete floors with tin roofs. Same. Same. Same. It’s funny how many small villages around the equator are all similar in style, at least for me. I find myself very much at home with people and kids like these.
Landy then gave me the details about what to expect for the day and what we could do for activities. Whang-Od was super busy giving tattoos now, so I might not be able to get one until tomorrow. Given that information, I decided right then to stay the night. She then told me to rest and do some coffee time at my homestay, which I’m an expert at, so I obliged to a full cup of Buscalan’s best, similar to Seatle’s Best (Worst) Coffee.
Landy then told me that while I waited for Whang-Od, we could do the following:
- More Coffee
- See the Rice Fields
- Go see a Museum? (it rained, so we didn’t have time)
I decided on option #2 followed by #1, and oh boy was I lucky.
I got to learn a little about rice farming when we took a nice little trip to the rice fields behind the village. Landy said she’s been farming local rice for a long time, so I picked her brain. We even grabbed some fresh rice and I got to look up close at what it looked like before I saw it on the grocery shelves. It was cool. Very cool and very legal.
It’s Time
After some more homestay coffee, a bunch of freshly-completed tattoo-ees joined us at the homestay, arms and wrists bleeding from their newly minted flesh with three black dots. They were all from Tingalan or Tabuk I believe, and this was their first trip to Buscalan. Looking at how much blood was oozing out of their three dots, I got even more nervous about what I wasn’t even sure I was going to get. But after I started to begin the chickening-out process, Landy then grabbed me and repeated the words I’d been dying to hear.
It’s time.
Oh f*ck.
She hands me my own tattoo needle, a pomelo fruit needle on top of a handcrafted wooden shaft with a string to connect a needle cover.
She leads me to the hut where I see like 40 people standing around and sitting in white plastic chairs, and in the middle of it all is the legend Whang-Od in attire I would expect from 50 Cent, not a 106-year-old lady! But as an OG, she can do as she pleases!
I start taking notes, and I see infection risk everywhere. I’m a bit of a worry wart, so I start thinking of the risks.
HIV. Hepatitis B. Hepatitis C. All the blood diseases. Damn. Luckily all of these risks from tattooing, especially traditional tattooing are very very very low, so I try to calm myself down because at least everyone gets their own tattoo needle. But I see Whang-Od…
- Using the same blood-cleaning wipe for multiple people (Not good)
- Using the same ink applicator for multiple people without cleaning it between uses (Not good)
So I start to get worried about infection even though I know the risks are low. I prep my deltoid with rubbing alcohol, and then I call Landy over. Hey, could you please ask Whang-Od to use a fresh cleaning wipe for me, not covered in other people’s blood? Okay. Landy says she’ll do it. My infection risk goes down a bit, but it’s still there, lurking behind statistics that I intensely studied after getting my tattoo (note: do this beforehand).
Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. There are two seriously-tattooed French people in front of me who are amazed that this will be my first tattoo. After we all get a good laugh about me being listed as “foreigner” on the whiteboard, they get their tattoos done right in front of me. Landy then calls me up to the little wooden seat, and I show Whang-Od my left deltoid as if I’m getting my first Covid shot.
It’s time.
Imagine Someone Banging a Needle into Your Arm 100 Times a Minute
It hurt. A lot. Like, a lot. But I took it, and I took it with pride. This living legend decked out in a hat with the sticker still on it is nailing my arm in broad daylight, and I’m enjoying every second of the experience. I wince at Landy, and she just smiles at me knowing that this is my first tattoo. However, it’s common knowledge that Whang-Od is not at gentle as she once was, and the bruising I had for a week later on my arm is proof of it!
After she gave me the “all-done” head nod because she doesn’t speak English, I was expecting her to do a sexual joke or infamously grab my package as she’s done for thousands of others. Surprisingly, she did not, but we did get to take a quick photo on cue like she’d done for the other 100 tourists that day.
I got up and walked my way out with Landy, oozing blood from my arm, and then the realization hit. This was going to be on my arm forever in the aftermath.
The Aftermath
I headed back up to my homestay to process what had just happened. I had just received my first and only tattoo from a living legend who had tattooed headhunters before (literal Filipino jungle mercenaries), and now my arm could not stop bleeding. With 30 minutes of applied pressure, the bleeding finally stopped. With an intense desire to squeeze ever minute of this experience out of this Buscalan sponge, I drank some beers with the French couple that got tattooed just before me, sang some songs on the guitar, did some karaoke with the local girls in the village at my homestay, and called it a night. I was pooped by 9 pm and fell into my pillow in the open-air night.
It’s 5:45 am the next morning, and my deltoid is swollen and hurts a bit. It’s manageable, and I’ve already put some anti-biotic ointment on it. It’s time to go back to Baguio, but I find myself conflicted about leaving such a beautiful and lovely place in these mountains. This last 18 hours had brought me back to being a Peace Corps Volunteer, but this time I had a mark to prove it that wasn’t just a US Government paper and a blog!
Landy meets me for a quick cup of coffee time, and then we head down on the trail with another Filipina and her guide. The trip back was much quicker at only 15 minutes (no breaks), but I still broke a bit of a sweat even in the chilly morning.
I thank Landy for being an amazing guide, get her paid with a 2X tip of her daily fee, pay up the registration fee, and get going on the motorbike down to catch the 9:30 am jeepney back to Bontoc. My journey has ended, but my Whang-Od tattoo lives on me!
A Recap Nightcap
My journey was long. Tiresome. Filled with accidents, risk, childhood Mormon trauma, friendly kids, and eating karapau water buffalo (oh yea, I forgot to tell that part!). It was the journey and story of a lifetime, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
So if you’re worried about going to Buscalan to get a tattoo with Whang-Od, you should be. Seriously. It’s risky. But, But! Just know that I’d do it again, and I hope my story helps inspire the inner traveler in you to go explore the world while we’re still here on this blue dot.
Detailed Instructions on How to Go From Baguio to Buscalan (How to Visit Whang-Od’s Village)
Google Map with Steps & Directions: Google Map Link
- In Baguio, go to the D’Rising Sun Bus terminal and ask one of the stall people what times the bus to Bontoc leaves. They told me 3 bus times from Baguio to Bontoc for around 500 pesos (6 am / 7 am / 9 am). Take the 6 am or earliest bus if possible as you’ll want to get to Bontoc before 3 pm (see step #2 below for why). Please note that this bus ride is dangerous as bus drivers and cars fly around blind corners and pass others very carelessly. My bus got into an accident with a car, but everyone was okay.
2. If you make it to Bontoc before ~3 pm, ask around for where the Jeepney to Tabuk is (dropping you off in Bugnay). You won’t be going to Tabuk all the way, but you’ll be getting dropped off at a convenience store in Bugnay about a 2 hours jeepney ride from Bontoc. Ask your fellow jeepney passengers and driver to drop you off to go to Buscalan to see Whang-Od. They’ll know where to drop you off. I believe this trip from Bontoc to Bugnay cost me 200 pesos.
2a. If you make it to Bontoc after ~3 pm, it’s getting a bit late to go to Buscalan, and I’m not sure any more jeepneys will be going there. It might be smart to stay the night in Bontoc and then take the 6 / 7 am jeepney from the Bontoc Bus Station to Buscalan (that’s what I did). But, if you really want to push your luck, ask if there’s still a jeepney going to Tabuk (drop off at Bugnay / Buscalan) after 3 pm OR you can hire someone on a motorbike to take you to the convenience store on a motorbike. Hiring someone on a motorbike will be expensive.
2b [Travel Note]. On the way to Bugnay in the jeepney, you’ll need to do some police checkpoints where you’ll sign in to a couple of books to say that you’re a tourist. Don’t worry. No payment here.
3. Once you arrive at the convenience store in Bugnay, ask someone to take you on a motorbike to Buscalan. Usually, there are some young men who do this constantly for tourists. It cost me about 150–200 pesos (can’t remember), and the motorbike ride up to the start of Buscalan will take about 15–20 minutes.
4. The motorbike will drop you off at the check-in point for tourists coming to Buscalan. It’s actually quite organized with tour guides, a sign-in book, and information about the cost and everything. You will be assigned a tour guide who will guide you on the hike to Buscalan from the check-in point, and my tour guide spoke great English and was very helpful. 😊
Here are the costs you’ll need to pay when arriving at
- Daily Tourguide Cost (24 Hours): 1,000 pesos/person
- Staying Overnight in a Homestay: 400 pesos/person. This potentially includes meals, but I heard another couple that actually didn’t get meals. There are some other families and houses in Buscalan village that can get you lunch and dinner if your homestay is slacking.
- Registration Fee (~150 pesos?): I forgot exactly how much this was, but it was very cheap.
5. You’ll hike with your tour guide on a relatively challenging hike down a path to cross a river (you won’t get wet). Then you’ll come up the other side of the ravine path (dirt path) to hike up the hill to Buscalan village. This hike took me about 30 minutes from the start point going up to the village, but only about 15 minutes coming back, but for other people, it might take up to an hour with rest breaks.
6. Boom! Welcome to Buscalan! You’ll be greeted by many happy kids and locals walking around, smiling at you. Your guide will then take you to a place to rest, and if you’re staying overnight, they’ll take you to your homestay.
7. To see Whang-Od and to get a tattoo, you’ll need to wait. If you want a tattoo from Whang-Od, tell your guide. Somedays she does tattoos. Other days she doesn’t. It really depends. You might get lucky, and all of a sudden your guide will tell you it’s time to go see Whang-Od, but you will really never know when it will happen. For me, I got my tattoo at 3pm on Sunday.
But even if she’s not doing tattoos, there are many other people in the village who are really great tattoo artists, including Whang-Od’s grand-nieces (she never had kids and was never married).
Going Back from Buscalan to Baguio / Manila
Essentially you do the same trip for how you got there but in reverse. However, here are some key points.
1. If you stay the night in Buscalan, you’ll probably need to wake up at 5:45 am the next day and then be heading out with your tour guide at 6 am to hike back down to the starting point. Just tell your guide that you want to leave the next morning, and they’ll hook it up for you to get back. Make sure to pay your homestay people before you leave!
2. After the 20–30 minute hike down to the check-in point, if you haven’t paid your tour guide and the entrance fee as discussed before, you’ll need to do that here.
3. You’ll hop on the back of a motorbike and go back down to the convenience store in Bugnay (15–25 minutes bike ride).
4. If you’re going back to Manila, you’ll wait for the jeepney going to Tabuk. If you’re going to Baguio, you’ll wait for the jeepney going to Bontoc. Our jeepney got there at 9–9:30 am, and we got into Bontoc at 11 am.
5a. If you’re going to Baguio, go to the bus station in Bontoc and book a ticket back to Baguio (the same bus station where you came into Bontoc).
5b. If you’re going to Manila, go to the bus station in Tabuk and book a bus ride back to Manila. I’ve been told it’s really long. Eeks.
