Since Workaways have been some of our favorite parts of the trip, we wanted to make sure we had time to squeeze in one more before heading home. We were lucky to find one in Chiang Rai in the north of Thailand on a vanilla farm. Now we, like most people, had no idea they grew vanilla in Thailand – which is because historically they haven’t! This is one of the very first in the country. They’re just getting started out and hoping to help start a new industry in the area.

We were hoping that crossing back into Thailand the smoke wouldn’t be so bad, but we definitely didn’t get lucky on that front. Our first week on the farm wasn’t horrible, but the second week was brutal. The smoke was so thick that physical exertion was difficult, and if we worked too hard we started to feel ill. Graciously our hosts bought us an air filter for our apartment which really helped with sleeping, but the common areas in their house only had screen doors so there was no way to shut out the smoke. Apparently this is the worst the smoke has ever been during crop burning season, and at one point we were in the epicenter of the worst air quality in all of Asia. Talk about timing!

The Farm & Family

Our hosts on the farm were Denis and Kay, a Swiss man and Thai-Swiss woman who moved to Chiang Rai in 2020 from Switzerland. This vanilla farm is sort of their retirement project, and their hope is to eventually pass on their vanilla-growing knowledge to locals who are interested. Denis and Kay are definitely fans of the finer things in life, and every time we went out to dinner it was by far the nicest restaurant in the area. Over the weeks we were there we learned more and more tidbits about their life, and it sounds like Kay comes from a very affluent family in Bangkok. At one point Denis was telling a story when he just happened to mention the Thai queen-mother was there. Apparently they’ve met several times and are part of the same Thai-Swiss club. Casual royal connections!

As far as Workaway accommodation goes, this was by far the nicest. We had our own separate apartment attached to the house with our own bedroom, bathroom, and living room, and most importantly we had air conditioning. Denis & Kay welcomed us into their home immediately, as did their dogs Sema and Bongo. But our favorite was actually one of the worker’s dogs – Teddy – who hung out at the house all day with the other dogs during work hours. He was the most affectionate but playful little pup. Our last night on the farm Denis and Kay were watching him for the night so we asked if we could have him sleep in our apartment with us. It started off pretty well – though he was obviously confused about why he was allowed into a part of the house he’d never been in before – but he accepted it and laid down and let us pet him. But once he started to realize we didn’t plan on taking him back out and he was stuck there for the night, he started getting very anxious and went to the front door and started whining and shaking. We felt horrible! We of course let him go back to where he usually sleeps, but we were definitely bummed he didn’t want to cuddle with us our last night on the farm.

The farm itself is ~12,000 sq meters and is composed of four greenhouses, each housing plants at different stages in the growing process. There are about eight Thai workers who work full-time on the farm and live there during the week. They all seemed super nice but unfortunately only one of them – Tiger – spoke English so we didn’t get to interact much.

The Work

Our first week on the farm was pretty physically demanding. Most days we worked four hours in the morning, took a couple hour break, then worked another hour or two in the afternoon. Unfortunately our second week the smoke in the area was too intense to do anything too strenuous, so our jobs changed a bit. Our main tasks –

• Filling Tutors – Vanilla typically grows on trees, so they created their own tree-like structures by filling them with soil and coconut fiber. This was our main job while we were there.
• Planting – we got to plant both baby vanilla plants as well as more mature ones into the tutors we filled. Then as they grew while we were there we would pin them to the sides of the tutors so they would start growing up.
• Pollinating – Very excitingly, the farm’s first ever vanilla flower bloomed while we were there! It took them three years to get their first flower, so we got to learn along with them how to hand-pollinate the flower. (Thailand doesn’t have the right kind of bees to pollinate vanilla plants). They let us each pollinate one, which was a lot of pressure considering it was two of their like ten flowers they’ve ever had!
• Painting – during the smoke we painted a new little sun room they built. I used to think I liked painting, but after painting a ceiling in 90 degree weather I quickly changed my mind.

It was amazing hearing that it took the farm three years to get the plants to the point where they would flower, and then after they pollinate the flowers it’s another six months before they can actually harvest the vanilla bean. And then they have to wait even longer to ferment the vanilla and turn it into a finished product. Vanilla is a very lucrative crop, but no wonder people don’t start vanilla farms!

The Food

Kay cooked us lunch and dinner most days, and every meal was extremely delicious. Most weren’t Thai recipes, but it was honestly a nice break from the month of Thai food we had already had. John asked her for several recipes and cooking tips, so hopefully I will be eating more of those meals soon 🙂

We cooked a few nights as well, and since Kay is an incredibly picky eater we had our work cut out for us. Our favorite thing she says is “it’s good but I don’t like it”. She ended up liking everything we cooked, especially the gumbo and the pizza. We always knew if Kay went back for seconds we did a good job!

Denis introduced me to “orange coffee” which is half iced americano half orange juice. I was incredibly skeptical and if he hadn’t insisted I probably wouldn’t have even tried it, but it quickly became my favorite type of coffee and I ordered it anytime I saw it (which was often).

On our last day of work, Kay threw me a “birthday party” since my birthday was a few days after we left the farm. She bought a cake and everything, but since she had no idea what kind of cake I wanted she bought a bunch of different slices in different flavors and it was very sweet!

Speaking of sweets, Denis has a sweet tooth and always keeps the freezer well stocked with ice cream. Every five days or so, we would drive to a nearby family-owned convenience store and buy their entire stock of Magnum ice cream bars, which was usually 15-20 bars. Apparently they order them just for Denis!

The Sightseeing

Denis was always very excited to take us out to sightsee on the weekends and made sure we made the most of our free days. The main sites we visited –

• The White Temple – a truly incredible but strange temple in Chiang Rai. With things like hands reaching up from hell in front of the temple, and images of Marvel characters inside, it was definitely unlike anything we had ever seen. But beautiful!
• The Black House – apparently built in sort of response to the White Temple, the black house can’t really be considered a temple. We admit that we didn’t really get it… there were animal skins, antlers, and alligators all over the place. But we ate some charcoal ice cream while we were there so we had a nice time.
• The Blue Temple – if the other colored temples get tourists to visit why not add another color? It was a beautiful temple but not quite as exciting as the other two. But yes very blue.
• Doi Chaang Coffee – a coffee plantation located on a farm that used to grow opium. It’s famous in Thailand because the coffee is actually delicious, but also because it became a good example of a national effort to transition farms from opium to a different crop and being very successful at it.
• Doi Chaang Buddhist Park – A really cool forest and garden full of Buddhist statues. A monk lives there full time and takes care of the grounds.
• The Opium Museum – up near the Golden Triangle (the meeting of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar borders) there is a really well-done opium museum. It walked through the history of the opium farming in the region as well as the impact of opium around the world. It was really interesting and we definitely recommend it!
• Massages – on our last full day, Kay and Denis took us to a spa to get massages. Getting massages in Thailand isn’t exactly a rare or expensive thing, but they took us to a very nice spa and Kay got me the body scrub/massage package so we ended up staying there for over 2 hours and it was wonderful. They really do enjoy the finer things in life but they don’t mind sharing it and we appreciated it 🙂

After a little over two weeks our time at the vanilla farm came to a close. We were sad to leave but eager to get out of the worst of the smoke. I was also excited to start my birthday week – so to Chiang Mai we go!

Christine