Rucksack Wanderer’s Secret Destinations

Words: Tim Patterson
Photos: Hadar Nestel

I want to tell you about my favorite place in all of Thailand, a growing community of farmers, builders and visionaries at the edge of a National Park in the rural North, not far from Chiang Mai. This place isn’t in any guidebook, and you won’t see it marked on any map, but every traveler who manages to find it feels like they’ve won a lottery. I arrived this spring planning to stay two or three days. One month later, I had built a home.

This isn’t just an article about a hot new tourist attraction; it’s about a place that inspired me like no other, it’s about my friends, and I share it with you in the spirit of mutual trust and goodwill.

“Life is easy, why do we choose to make it so hard and complicated?”
– Jo Jandai, founder, Pun Pun farm and natural building center

“Don’t try to inspire anyone besides yourself. Live a life of inspiration and people will be inspired naturally.”
– Christian, founder, Panya Project sustainable living center

“I keep wondering when the word is going to get out about this place.”
- Julia, Pun Pun intern

We were having a party on the night of the Great Outhouse Fire.

I don’t remember what this particular party was for, but it was very well attended. About twenty-five people were gathered at Pun Pun farm, a mix of Westerners and Thais, everyone feasting on bowls of vegetarian green curry, sweet mango sticky rice, warm slabs of ripe papaya and cold bottles of beer. The house band was gearing up when I ducked into the banana trees for a pee and noticed an orange glow in the valley above the Panya Project.

Fires were nothing to get excited about. Spring is the dry season in Northern Thailand and villagers were clearing land the old fashioned way, setting slow burning blazes that crept through the dry forests, licking away the underbrush. Some nights three or four fires were burning nearby, and we would gather on clay benches carved into a hilltop at the You Sabai cooking school to sip ginger tea and watch flame-lines undulate across the mountainsides.

This fire was different. It was concentrated, tall, intense…and it reeked.

A cry went up across the valley. Party-goers set down their beers, grabbed hoes and shovels and raced down dark footpaths toward the conflagration. Forty foot flames were leaping from Panya’s brand new composting toilet, which was located next to the storehouse, which was full of…fertilizer.

Natural fertilizer.  Read More...