BANGKOK, March 23 -- 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 palour," he told AFP in 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 parlours are omnipresent and offer designs ranging from the ancient and spiritual to the modern and profane.

Napat's father Nattawut Sangtong said he introduced his son - who goes by the nickname "Knight" - to the craft of tattooing to swerve the pitfalls of contemporary childh...