We found Thung Dong Farm on the internet back in December and I emailed the owner, Ae, to see if we could stay in the summer. For the six months before we actually went to the farm, Ae emailed us literally every other week to check in - what did we like to eat for breakfast? Were we allergic to anything? Did we need any hotel recommendations? Did our cellphone have a Thai SIM card? Were we scared of the military coup? Did we like hot springs? Pomello juice?
Ae was so genuinely interested in our trip and our preferences that we knew his farm was going to be memorable!
The term "farm" is used loosely here. It's basically just two city dudes, Ae and Nack, who moved out to the countryside to run the little farm and host other city folk like us on a couple acres of land with a hilarious collection of animals. Ae and Nack are really funny guys and they kept us busy for three days just putting us in stupid situations with their animals and letting us play.
We fed the chickens and the geese!
We fed the fish!
We followed around this wild horse, and fed him carrots (they filled our fridge with them!)...
Read doesn't seem to know what to do with a wild horse...
In the afternoons, Nack would pull up to the house and tell us to get in his sidecar with a bag of feed and we'd go see their comically obese hogs (which they rescued from the Hill People, who eat the hogs, and they don't like that).
Their most prized animals were their set of pink buffaloes, which apparently is a real animal. The guys were obsessed with them and were trying to breed them to make more pink buffaloes. On the last day, Ae brought us out to ride them and we thought he was joking.
He totally wasn't.
Nack also fed us something delicious every three hours - like, A LOT.
And Ae BBQ'ed just so we'd have beer snacks.
Nack grabbed a couple of skewers and left for about 15 minutes to go bring them to a girl he liked.
Did I mention this all cost less than a stay at a roadside Howard Johnson in Upstate NY?
If you're in Northern Thailand, GO before they figure out they're running a magical summer camp for adults and that EVERYONE wants to ride a pink buffalo. We felt like we had a Thai family for a few days and it was one of the best experiences we had in Thailand, which was one of the best countries we've visited!
