Chiang Mai - Workaway

Once we arrived in Chiang Mai, we first headed to the Chada Vegetarian Restaurant in the center of the city to enjoy some amazing Thai food for lunch. We then took a taxi to get to a place a bit outside of the city center where we started our second attempt at a Workaway (see our Luang Prabang - Sasa Lao Workaway footprint for our first Workaway experience). Unlike the first Workaway, this was at a private home of a couple named Daniel and Ora. Daniel is originally from Canada, whereas Ora is Thai. Based on their Workaway profile, we knew that Daniel and Ora were very busy and would not be around most of the time. Ora is a teacher and usually works all day. Daniel recently had a knee injury and was mostly working from home but still went out by car many times per day to get some tasks done outside the house. He was the one who created the Workaway profile and gave us our tasks during our stay.

Their property was surrounded by concrete walls and featured a fairly big house, some yard around the house, and a small shed behind the house, which used to be the maid’s house back in the day and would now serve as our accommodation. The maid’s house contained a simple bunk bed in a roughly seven square meters room and a small adjacent bathroom with toilet, shower (no hot water and shower curtains), and sink in about two square meters. We were a bit shocked when we first entered our new home as it seemed very run-down, which we think was mainly due to the big rusty road sign on the wall. Besides that, it wasn’t exactly a palace, but OK for a short stay. The beds were not ready when we arrived since the upper bunk bed missed a board under the mattress because the previous one was rotten. So our first action was to hop in the back of Daniel’s pickup truck to get a new board from the hardware store and then cut it to size to fit the bed. Once done, the four of us then took the car to a food cart to eat some chicken and rice for dinner before heading back to the house where we still had some tasks to do to settle into our new accommodation. The biggest of these tasks was to hang our mosquito nets over the beds as well as we could, since we really didn’t want to be harassed by these little creatures that were around in big numbers all night.

On the next day, there was nothing to be done for us in the morning, since we didn’t yet have any tasks to work on independently and Daniel didn’t have time for us. The four of us went to a vegan restaurant to have lunch and then we spent the afternoon working on various small tasks with Daniel. We first went to the hardware store with Daniel again, to buy some metal tubes. This included Matthias’ first ride in a right-hand drive car. He brought us in one of Daniel’s pickups from the house to a parking lot away from the house where we hopped into a different pickup to get to the hardware store. This does not sound like something special besides driving on the left side, but to add to that, the pickups were very old and completely run-down so simply driving them was already an experience. Back at the house we then cleaned some of the bikes and pumped their tires up, cut down a banana tree and discussed a project in the pheasant cage behind the house, which would become our main project for the coming days. We then made some preparations for working in the pheasant cage the next day before cooking and eating dinner together. When we were already sitting at the table to eat dinner, Ora suddenly thought there wasn’t enough food and hopped onto a scooter to buy some cooked vegetables, which she brought home in a plastic bag (as it is common for takeaway food in Thailand). Note from the editor: dinner would have been perfectly fine without those additional vegetables, but it still makes for a fun anecdote.

In the coming two days we worked mainly independently (besides Daniel watching over our shoulders from time to time) on our project in the pheasant cage and went to have lunch and dinner on our own by riding bicycles to a nearby square with many different restaurants, food stalls, and an amazing bakery. The pheasant cage was a metal cage installed between the house and one of the walls surrounding the property. It was a bit more than one meter wide and had tiles on the floor, which were there already when they bought the house. Daniel created some small areas in the cage which were surrounded by stones and mortar and filled with gravel for the pheasants to scratch around in. Since the pheasants would keep kicking the gravel outside of these areas, Daniel wanted us to make the surrounding stone barriers a bit higher. We did this by removing the stones and then adding a layer of bricks and mortar on the ground before putting the stones back on top with some additional mortar.

After two days of working on this project, it was clear that this Workaway was not working out for us, and we decided to leave much earlier than the two weeks we originally planned. One big aspect in this was the accommodation, which did not let us sleep well – especially Marina. Regarding our tasks it was also very difficult as Daniel was often not around and when he was, he was often not able to communicate what and how he wanted to have something done. He spoke extremely slowly and would lose himself in his thoughts while talking. It was not uncommon for us to sit together with him for 15 minutes, trying to get some concrete information on what to do, without him getting to a point where we knew what to do. Also, it seemed that he wanted things to be done in a very specific way but he didn’t know and could not communicate his intentions beforehand, which made it difficult for us to work for him. In the pheasant cage he told us that we should take pictures beforehand as he wanted the stones to be set back exactly the same as before, but higher. This is what we did but after setting some of the stones he was not happy about the gaps between the stones at the top (which were already there before) and wanted us to rearrange the stones to avoid the gaps. While we were working on this, he also wanted to make the gravel areas slightly wider but not too wide such that he can still easily walk by on the tiles next to them. We did what we could but apparently after the two days of us doing and redoing stuff, he was not happy with it. After being absent to get food, we noticed that he knocked the bricks out from underneath the stones we had already set on top with mortar. Since we already decided to leave the Workaway, we never talked to him about this but either the passage to walk by was now too narrow or he just didn’t like the looks or something else. Looks were apparently very important as he instructed us to make the mortar surfaces rough, because he did not like the looks of smooth mortar surfaces. Of course the surface of a few centimeters tall mortar layer under some stones behind the house is something you stare at all day and hence needs to fulfill high visual standards. His inability to communicate what he wanted combined with a very specific vision of how things should and should not be, while changing that vision on the go made us feel useless there. Actually, this was not just a feeling but we were objectively useless there. Our alternative approach: just cover the strip between the house and the wall with gravel and the pheasant cage is done in no time and all problems are solved forever. Life could be simple!

So being useless and staying in a rather shitty accommodation that does not even save us much money compared to a hotel is not at all how we imagined our Workaway experiences to look. Therefore, we spent a day looking for a hotel and planning ahead a bit before having a chat with Daniel to tell him that we would leave, and actually packing our things and leaving after five nights to spend the rest of our time in Chiang Mai as regular tourists.

This experience gave us quite something to reflect on and we found it especially crazy how people can think they’re very busy when their lives are actually incredibly inefficient. Using the car to go get small, single tasks done many times of the day is basically just overhead. Not knowing what to want ahead of time but then having very high demands on things that are just irrelevant (like the mortar surface finish in a pheasant cage) will get you nowhere. This is what we witnessed here over and over again and we were very happy that our lives in Switzerland are so much more efficient. And we also agreed that we absolutely want to make sure our lives will never become this inefficient. So after all, there is probably still something good that we take away from this experience, even if it is just how not to do things.

Delicious drink & food options close to our Workaway:
- Roast ‘n’ Brew Cafe (great coffee and honey lemon drink)
- Nana Bakery (delicious croissants)
- Chum Bar & Restaurant (modern restaurant with a great Khao Soi)
- Peppino Restaurant (We went there twice. Their pastas and pizzas are truly delicious.)
- Thai Home by Hong Kong (good Thai food)Læs mere