Wielding a cumbersome tattoo gun with his small hands swamped in surgical gloves, nine-year-old Napat Mitmakorn expertly inks the pattern of a fanged serpent on a man’s upper thigh.
“I want to be a tattoo artist and open my own tattoo parlor,” he said at his booth at a Bangkok tattoo expo, where fascinated attendees paused to film his work. “I like art so I like to tattoo.”
Tattooing is a centuries-old tradition in Thailand, where tattoo parlors are omnipresent and offer designs ranging from the ancient and spiritual to the modern and profane.
Photo: AFP
Napat’s father, Nattawut Sangtong, said he introduced his son — who goes by the nickname “Knight” — to the craft of tattooing to avoid the pitfalls of contemporary childhood.
“I just wanted to keep him away from his phone, because he was addicted to gaming and had a short attention span,” said the 38-year-old, also an amateur tattooist, who works at a block printing factory.
The father-son duo together learned from TikTok tutorials and practiced on paper before graduating to artificial leather simulating human skin, and then the real thing.
Photo: AFP
Knight said he swiftly picked up the skills, because art is his favorite school subject.
Recognizing his son’s talent, Nattawut now coaches him in two-hour sessions three days a week.
“It’s not just tattooing, it’s like meditation,” Nattawut said.
The pair run a TikTok channel together — “The Tattoo Artist with Milk Teeth” — where they livestream Knight’s sessions and sometimes draw hundreds of thousands of viewers with a single clip.
His Saturday session at the Thailand Tattoo Expo was his public debut, as he tattooed his uncle for a second time — marking him with a 20cm mythical Naga serpent.
Unfazed by the techno music blaring from massive speakers, Knight predicts the creature from Hindu and Thai folklore would take 12 hours to complete.
For now, his father insists he only works on family and friends — opening up to public clients would require more rigorous hygiene training.
However, Naruebet Chonlatachaisit, Knight’s uncle, is relaxed as the tattoo takes shape on his left leg.
“I trust him, and I think he’ll only improve,” he said.
Knight was one of nearly 200 artists at the Thailand Tattoo Expo — but drew outsized attention among the crowds of thousands of visitors this weekend.
Office worker Napat Muangsawang stopped by the boy’s booth to admire his meticulous artistry.
“It’s quite amazing. Tattooing isn’t easy,” he said. “It’s not like drawing on a paper where you can just erase it.”
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages
RSS