From Juice Bars to Natural Empires: Marike Van Breugel's Journey in Chiang Mai S01/E14

Join Ash on a captivating journey through Chiang Mai as he sits down with Marike Van Breugel, the trailblazer behind Pure Thai Naturals and @expat&locals Facebook page.

Discover the origins of a juice bar that sparked a global smoothie trend and the birth of a business that champions organic over chemical. This isn't just a story of entrepreneurship; it's a narrative of community engagement and cultural connection.

Marike shares insights on sustainable business practices, the allure of natural products, and the impact of communal work in mountain communities.

Join us as we explore the tapestry of lives intertwined by fate, business, and a shared love for Chiang Mai — a city that continues to captivate souls worldwide.

https://linktr.ee/cnxpodcast

Transcript

Ash: 0:00

Hello everyone, welcome to the show. Today we have a very special guest, ladies and gentlemen. It's the one and only, it's Marieke van Bruggele.

Marike: 0:10

Hello.

Ash: 0:11

Hi, Thank you so much for coming in. I'm super excited to have this conversation with you. You're, we're relatively new to each other.

Marike: 0:18

We are indeed and that's a surprise in Chiang Mai that you still can meet people after 20 years that you've never seen

Ash: 0:24

Yeah, for sure. That's one of the reasons why I'm doing this. I want this podcast to connect people. There's so many interesting people with great stories. I get asked, Oh, who's that person? And now I can just say I can just send you to an episode of my podcast. And hopefully this whole podcast will connect more people and will give us a bit more of a sense of community. And I know that's something that you're very into yourself. Yeah, so let me give you an introduction. I know you as the owner of Pure Thai Naturals, which is a Thai company. I also know you as the admin for Chiang Mai expat and locals living in Chiang Mai.

Marike: 1:05

locals

Ash: 1:06

So that is a Facebook group that I'm sure a lot of our listeners use on a regular basis. I'm really interested to talk to you about that. I think everyone's interested in that. It's just a great promotional tool. It's a really useful resource. I imagine you get a lot of traffic, you get a lot of people. Yeah.

Marike: 1:25

We get between 12 and 20, 000 unique views a day.

Ash: 1:29

A day. That's amazing.

Marike: 1:32

incredible.

Ash: 1:32

And I also know that you've been here in Chiang Mai for almost 22 years as a single parent. Wow, that's a ch

Marike: 1:39

a single parent in the very first few

Ash: 1:41

Okay if you're okay with that, maybe we can talk a bit about that too. But let's start at the top, which is Pure Thai Naturals. you are into sustainable business. You're into natural products. What's the product range?

Marike: 1:55

Our most popular oil, our most commonly known products are insect repellents. So we make insect repellent, spray and balm. We make Thai massage products. We make body scrubs, face scrubs, face masks, wear very well known for our bees wax, BALs. And we supply all kinds of people from pharmacies right through to spas, massage centers. We have a international following for more than 20 years.

Ash: 2:18

You are the founder. So what was the inspiration behind that? most founders are like I wanted to solve my own problem.

Marike: 2:24

Gosh, no, not at all. had the very first juice bar in Chiang Mai outside of Wat Phra

Ash: 2:29

That's a big statement. How do you know it was the very first?

Marike: 2:32

I watched someone copy me.

Ash: 2:34

this was before the smoothie culture.

Marike: 2:37

Oh, long before. Far too early. I've decided and discovered that I'm one of those people that's ten miles ahead of the curve and we went broke backwards running the juice bar.

Ash: 2:47

They call that bleeding edge rather than cutting edge. It's yeah.

Marike: 2:50

And so we had a very niche following, but in those days the seasons were far more pronounced. So the low season was much lower and the high season was much higher and very short. there was no Facebook, so no one knew anything about why juices were good for you. And we had dedicated detox people who would come up to Chiang Mai looking for our kind of, we had a signature drink called the Coco Mango, which was coconut water with mango and bee pollen. But we didn't use sugar in our products, we didn't use ice, because in those days a lot of people were very nervous about the dirty

Ash: 3:20

Um,

Marike: 3:21

So we went broke backwards paying for the electric on the fridges. So a lot of wastage in the fruit. If you had a good day, you didn't have enough. And if you had a bad day, you had to throw it away. Because we used organic fruit, so it was a problem, and so to supplement the juice bar in, I think it's third year, I started stocking other people's health food products on the shelf at the back, so that while people were ordering, they would look around, we started making more money from the natural products. And then people came back on the second, third, or fourth day with kind of questions that I couldn't answer. Is this really natural? Is it really normal for a tiger balm to be this lurid green color? What makes that green color in nature? That kind of stuff. I couldn't answer them, and my ex Thai husband, who works with us now and a good friend and a big supporter of us at that time was very negative about what foreigners would and wouldn't spend money And so I asked him if he could organize for me to learn about Thai herbs from someone, and he was pretty anti at first. And he took me to, there were at, in those days the Thai Industry Promotion Council over by the train station. They had an old lady who was teaching skills. And I didn't speak a lick Thai in those days, so it was really challenging. And we would go and she would teach me all about the herbs and about the the bees wax and how to process things. And he would stand at the door smoking and translating for me And so we started that way and, it was really a sidekick for our juice bar initially. It was not actually ever designed to be a big business in its own right. And that was just after the tsunami. So Chiang Mai took a real hit in, the rest of south part took a hit in terms of the tsunami itself. But Chiang Mai took a massive financial hit. I had a small baby under my arm and two, Thai children that were my husband's by a previous marriage and we had a boy that we had adopted who was with us that I was his guardian while he was out of jail. So that me and the four kids running the juice bar and it was a very challenging time and because of that and out of that Pure Thai Naturals came to be.

Ash: 5:13

a little bit about the size of the business now.

Marike: 5:15

We try very hard not to be a big business. And so our model is a very devolved one. So our growers We have some peace workers at work off site But our goal is to empower the mountain communities to work with us rather than us having a dirty big factory in the back of Bangkok somewhere because we know that model doesn't work so we're in the process of moving to a completely closed system where we work with Echo Asia and they help people to learn how to grow organically and then we step back from that and we choose a village and we encourage them to grow ginger or whatever it is that we need and then we buy that back and we use that to make our products it's a very long game. It's taking 3, 4, 5 years to build up the supply chain so that we have enough organic product to use. We also can't call it organic legally because the people we buy from are not Thai citizens sometimes or they don't own the land. And so they're unable to get organic certification. But we would say that we're actually beyond organic. We're way past it.

Ash: 6:11

right, is an interesting point. Obviously, I know it from the labeling in Rimping, and I'm sure a lot of people study that. It's you're organic, or you're grown without herbicides and pesticides, or now I think they use the term general products, which means clearly they are.

Marike: 6:25

None of it means anything. Even organic products use pesticides. And they have certain chemical levels that are tolerated, there's a percentage of each product that's allowed to be chemical sourced, and what is that? People who think it's organic expect it to be organic. It's if you buy the, the pesticide safe vegetables. It doesn't mean that we're growing without pesticides. It just means in the three days before harvest, they stopped using pesticides. And so the product has pesticides in it. because I am so passionate about making sure the product is clean, we actually don't source any of our product on the flatlands. We only source product on the mountain communities, specifically because they don't have the dirty water issue where Klong, whatever it is, has industrial waste in it and it's a huge problem. You can buy a piece of land here and the farmer up the road decides to spray Paraquat and you have no control over how that ends up in your water source or in the groundwater. But the beauty of growing on the mountains is that we actually don't have that problem. We have a massive dry season where there's no water. And when it rains, it's clean and there's nothing above them that can put pesticide runoff. I actually went to the mountains with an American soldier here, who was a geo surveyor kind of person. And we talked about, in the 10 to 20 year window, what would happen if we bought land in Major, When you actually map out geography of Chiang Mai, there's only two or three areas that will be organic in the long run. Just because of the geopolitics of how it's developing.

Ash: 7:45

how

Marike: 7:46

if you look at Chiang Rai, it's going to be the superhighway to southern China at some

Ash: 7:50

point. Yeah.

Marike: 7:50

And, standing there in 15 years time waving your flag saying we're organic is really not going to cut it.

Ash: 7:55

going to cut

Marike: 7:56

So we're focusing on Chiangdao. We work with communities around the back of Mae Saryang. There's a huge pocket of national forest between Mae Saryang and the Burmese border. There's a lot of unemployment there, so we work with the communities around there. We work with communities around the back of Ob Luang, at the back of Doi Intanon. And so we aim to provide employment to small

Ash: 8:17

That is quite an interesting foundation to your business. Interesting for me to learn a little bit more about organics, and Your philosophy towards trying to stay organic even though you don't get that organic Certification that I think most consumers look for

Marike: 8:33

To be honest, the really enlightened consumers don't even look for it anymore because They don't trust it

Ash: 8:38

and they know that Oh 95 percent organic three days before we harvest it doesn't cut it,

Marike: 8:44

So people have always come to us and said, can we go with you to the mountain where things are grown? And so because of that, it's shaped the way that I want to build the business. And so it means I don't want to have a factory in major or wherever it is. I want to have our place out in Changdao next to the nature preserve where people can really see I have a friend who's flying to Chiang Mai at the moment. She's on her way from the US. She's Thai. She's Thai. She's never seen a banana flower in her adult life. I know Thai people in Bangkok who come up to me very quietly and they say, Pee Malie those Thai herbal massage balls, like what is it? I've never used one. I've never seen it. Like, how does it grow? What is it? What do you do with it? So there's a whole generation of people coming forward who live in urban environments who don't understand the Thai natural world. And so we want to connect our customers and our prospective customers to

Ash: 9:32

Are your customers here, are they domestic in Thailand or do you also export? We

Marike: 9:36

Oh, we export too. We have a lot of domestic customers in about 27 And that's taken a serious hit since COVID Mostly because the shipping has collapsed. It's gone up 400 percent and a lot of the sea freight's no longer available in small domestic amounts. And there are some countries that is no longer even viable for us to look at. Australia and New Zealand to South Africa, just cross it off your list. The cost and the hurdles that they put in there in terms of bringing a natural product, it's just not honestly worth it anymore. And so COVID has been an enormous refocusing time for us. it's like the story just keeps evolving, we never advertised for the first 15 years of our business, it was a bit of a joke really. We had a shop in the old city and people would come in and they would ask all kinds of questions about Chiang Mai and where should they go and buy temple pants and, where's the nearest acupuncturist we got customers coming in year after year who were friends of friends who'd bought something seven years before us, and who were coming in. And I would come into the shop and I would say to the staff, how did you do today? She said, oh, very busy today, we have 93 people in the shop today. I said, did you sell? She said, sell nothing. said, they all come for your advice. they all know that you know where to go in the Taiway. And it's just because I've been here that long I've also seen an enormous amount of evolution and because I speak Thai. And so I have a completely different view of Thailand and Chiang Mai than a lot of expats do.

Ash: 10:56

Yeah, sure. Let's explore that a little bit more then. Because, that helps you see things differently. It really connects you to the local community. You are connected to both though, aren't you? So how is that different and where do they overlap?

Marike: 11:10

It's vastly different, mostly because I'll give you a really good example. When I got married to my Thai husband, we had a huge five day wedding extravaganza in Sukhothai. Very traditional thing, it was very traditional. 45 degrees or something. And I had some friends come up from Melbourne and Australia. And one of them was a dear friend of mine. Who's the daughter of a very famous journalist. And we had organized for a lot of our friends to stay at a nice hotels in Sukhothai and she didn't want to, she wanted to stay in the village house. So I said to her, you know, Megan, you really don't want to do that. And she insisted, you know, I want to, experience this natural. life that you talk about. so she came up and, it was all she was very anxious about the food, whether she'd catch food poisoning and all sorts of stuff. And the first night we were all sleeping upstairs in an open environment with mosquito nets. It was blisteringly hot, no air conditioning in those days. And she went to brush her teeth. So there's a little tin shack at the back that's the bathroom and she's 35 minutes. And I said at one point to Nui, my soon to be husband, I said, I think I need to go and look for Megan. I'm a bit concerned. so I wandered down the backyard with the torch kind of thing. And she's out there crying. And I said, what's wrong? And she said, I'm brushing my teeth and there's nowhere to spit. I said, what do you mean? There's nowhere to spit on the floor. She said, I just can't. She said, it's just barbaric. And she was a very well traveled woman whose father was a and still is a very prominent journalist in Australia and she was certainly not a sheltered expat at by any stretch of the imagination When I see some of these experiences and I see how much expat people here have zero idea of how and why Thai people I spend a lot of my time explaining things to people. it's funny, in the list of question prompts you ask me, tell me a funny story. So I used to teach a volunteer English at Watprasing. So the boy that we had brought up from the village, who was the sort of cousin of my new husband, he was on probation for drug trafficking. And I assigned him out of the prison and I had basically to look after him for a year. So I put him in school at Watprasing. Because it was near the juice bar and it was convenient and I thought he couldn't come up to any problems there. So the monk asked me if I would teach conversational English. Because back then there were very few English teachers. I collected magazines from people. and I had this fabulous idea that they would cut out things that they recognized and learn the words for it. I had no idea that most of these kids had never seen a Western house. They'd never seen like a tampon ad in a magazine. Words fail me. These kids were just gobsmacked. They were laughing and staring and pointing. They'd never seen a woman in a bikini. And this is only in 2004? These kids had zero, zero exposure to Western culture. And so, me stupidly not even thinking that this would be an issue. Just brought the magazines happily and handed them around and gave them all a pair of scissors and some glue and said, cut out things that interest you. And these little boys were cutting. I suddenly realized like when I look back now, how much Chiang Mai has changed because of the introduction of social media. So Thai people now, even if they don't have money, they can still open Instagram and see what a Western living room looks like. I knew people back then who'd never eaten with a knife and fork before, who didn't know how to cut a steak because it's rude in Thai culture to put a knife on the table.

Ash: 14:17

I didn't know that.

Marike: 14:19

in old Thai culture, it's a weapon. And so Thai food is always served with a spoon and a fork and it's the, and the meat is cut for you. You never have to cut a big hunk of steak.

Ash: 14:29

and I love the way they slice it up for me. It's nicer than

Marike: 14:32

And so this is a cultural thing. And so I do know people who had, 2005 had never used a knife, didn't know how. so we forget how much this world has evolved because people have suddenly got an exposure to things in a cost effective way that they didn't have before. we always had wealthy Thais, but the vast majority of the Thai community still doesn't to some degree have any understanding of how a Western house works. You know the old jokes about, you buy a house for your Thai girlfriend, make a nice kitchen and she sits on the floor to cook the meal. That is how they do it in the village. And they don't know how to do some of this stuff, but it was normal then. And so because I've come from that time before Facebook and before social media where people really didn't have exposure, I spent a lot of my time explaining Western life to Thai people back then. I now do it the other way. I remember I took a friend she wanted to come with us to the Lahu New Year in village that had only been open for two years. And the woman's a vegan and I said, you really don't want to come. they're going to be eating pork and having whiskey. And she wasn't a drinker either, so that was a no. she said, I'm sure they'll give me bananas and fruit. And I said, look, they really won't. Because it's really bad luck for the village to serve anything other than the best pork. No, they'll understand. There are bananas and of course that wasn't the case and she was really upset and didn't eat well for several days and spent most of her time alone picking at her flea bites, which we all had.

Ash: 15:55

which

Marike: 15:56

I thought it was a fabulous trip, but I've spent a lot of time doing that and it's because I live and have worked with some of those people that I understand how each side doesn't get the other.

Ash: 16:05

I understand each side doesn't get the other. And you've given us a little taste of how it was just so different. And I think we all imagined those days. I think we all, we can all

Marike: 16:15

You couldn't buy coffee. We had the first shop in Chiang Mai that sold fresh coffee in 2003. And I had to go to Bangkok to buy these hideously expensive glass coffee press things, And there was only one guy in those days, he still has the brand of coffee he was buying beans at the back of Prow, and we used to have to go to his little guest house and pick them up, there was no coffee, there was no bread, you couldn't buy milk to save your life. People look around and they say, Really? That's 15 years ago. And it's the event of social media that has changed a lot of these things. Because social media made flights possible. It made people get to understand why they might want to come here. I didn't choose to come to Chiang Mai. I hated it when I first arrived.

Ash: 16:55

arrived. This is interesting. Go drew you here?

Marike: 16:57

I came to live in Thailand with my American lover, and he committed suicide while I was in Samui. And in outfall, or devastation that happened after that, I married my Thai husband, and I found myself pregnant with twins at the age of 40, unexpectedly. And one of the twins died in utero in the fourth month, and in those days there was no maternity hospital in Samui, and I had the choice of Bangkok or Chiang Mai. so my now ex husband chose Chiang Mai because he had a cousin who lived here. So we came up to Chiang Mai and it was, we actually arrived in the last week of March. It was disgustingly smoky. It was a lot worse than it is now. The smoke was appalling. We drove up through Sukhothai and over the back way through Tern and Lampang. it was, my eyes were burning. I couldn't see properly. There was active fire in the hills around Kuntan. And I remember driving into Chiang Mai just being devastated thinking, how on earth did I get to be living here? I was, I'd come to live in an island paradise. And here I was in this urban smoky disaster zone and I hated it. of course my daughter was born safely. And once your child is born, they tell you to stay near the pediatrician for the first year. And then we needed a business. So we opened a business here and then she needed a school. Back then there were no schools in Samui. There was absolutely nothing. A lot of t shirt shops and a lot of old sex pets, but there wasn't much else then. there wasn't even a Tesco there then. I remember going from Samui up to Bangkok to buy a teapot. That's how much it's changed in a very short space of time. And so when I first came to Chiang Mai, I really didn't like it. I was pregnant and then young baby and had the children of my husband that we were looking after. And I became a single parent when my daughter was about five. It's really a radical shift how much things have moved. But it's because I have been able to live in Thailand before this Western beige bubble has grown up, that I really do get Thai people, I really do understand why they sweep the floor the way they do or why they Cook the way they do or whatever it is. get it because I've seen it in the village and I've seen how things work on a traditional level. a Western Dutch Australian. I get how Western people want coffee.

Ash: 18:58

to me, what is a Western Beige Bubble?

Marike: 19:01

A Western beige bubble has Starbucks and places like

Ash: 19:05

that. Okay. Beige just meaning bland.

Marike: 19:08

Yes, and if you ask me, what's my biggest regret with Chiang Mai? I would say that it's lost some of its color. it's harder to get genuine Thai food in Chiang Mai. I've been eating here with Thai friends and who don't like the food in the city of Chiang Mai because it's not really Thai Food anymore. They call it tourist Thai Because it's not spicy, it doesn't have blood in the soup, it doesn't have any critters in it. And they feel that it's become a little bland. And I'd agree with some parts of that.

Ash: 19:33

yeah, there's still some beautiful little hidden soys.

Marike: 19:37

when I see some expat person coming on the group sometimes saying, where can I buy quinoa? And I feel like saying, you came all the way to Chiang Mai for bloody quinoa. It doesn't grow here, people contact me constantly and ask, can we make lavender oil products? And I say to them, show me where the nearest lavender farm is. We don't got lavender here in that regard. so yeah, I do think Chiang Mai has become a little beige in some ways. social media has enabled a lot of people to come here and live in a bubble and not engage with any Thai people. I struggle with that I know a lot of Thai people resent it and don't like it at all. I think that's a shame. we stop learning from each other in that place. a lot of people approach me over the years, all sorts of things, somebody dies and they don't have enough money to do a western style funeral and they call me up and they say, how do I do a Thai funeral at a Thai price? How do I give birth to a baby at a Thai price? It costs about 6, 000 baht if you're a Thai person and you want to give birth to a baby. But it costs, 50, 000 if you're a foreigner and you don't speak Thai, so where's the difference? And so a lot of that is around navigating expectations.

Ash: 20:37

people have come to you it sounds like for the whole time that you've been in Chiang Mai people have come to you for that type of stuff is that just because who you are or if you position yourself someone that would be open to helping people?

Marike: 20:48

Back in the day, like before Nancy Lindley died, Nancy and I used to, it was her or me, someone who had a problem would call one of us and it was mostly because they'd heard from someone else who had a successful result by talking to us. have to appreciate back then there were hardly any Westerners in those days. there was the expat community that were all retired guys, pretty much. There were very few Western women here at all. the few people that were here knew about each other got on really well. So my daughter was in the first year intake at Ambassador Bilingual School. so there, I think there were 40 students in the first year, and there were four expat parents, three dudes and me. We got to be great friends.

Ash: 21:25

Yeah, good.

Marike: 21:26

But changed enormously. sometimes I don't recognize Chiang Mai. crowd of people at Pan Yarden was incredibly diverse. There's a huge influx at the moment of wealthy Burmese exiting from Yangon. Enormous community coming in from Taiwan waiting for World War III to blow up. There are huge pockets of people inflowing to Chiang Mai that are very different than what we've seen before. And they are vastly impacting the culture, in a good way, I think. It's de westernising the culture, it's going the other way again. there are more and more Burmese tea shops and fabulous restaurants opening up. I'm connected with the Bamboo Family Market and one of the organizers, a Burmese woman. You must put her on the podcast. She's on my list for you. Fascinating woman. But if I see crossover of cultures, so historically Burma and Thailand were always arch enemies. And suddenly I see this period of history where there are some very wealthy Burmese coming here right now, in the last month, particularly since the conscription laws have changed in Burma. And these people are bringing wealth into Chiang Mai that the government desperately wants. They have businesses, they're smart people, they're not the average housemaid or whatever people used to think they were. the Thai government is having to embrace the Burmese culture in a different way. I thought it was wonderful at the recent Chiang Mai Food Festival. Kim Chutima, who's a friend of mine who owns the old Chiang Mai Culture Centre through her family. She had a whole series of Burmese chefs, a chef's table with Burmese chefs. I thought it was fantastic. It would never have happened 15 years ago. when we drove the very first time from Bangkok up to Sukhothai, we stopped to, my ex husband pointed out to me the temple where the, it's a temple that's been built to the, a memory of where the Burmese got to in their invasion of Thailand. And I'm standing there taking pictures of it on an actual camera before we had smartphones, right? And he got really angry with me. He said, why are you taking a photo? That's, an abomination. This is a beautiful temple. It's a sign of how far the Burmese got into our country. And this was a common mindset. He's not particularly anything different than most Thai people I know who have been taught history from a certain perspective in school suddenly they are living history and they have social media now to support a different view of history. It's not possible to sanitize it in the same way anymore. They can hop onto any of the Burmese social media channels and they can actually see the villages being bombed and burned and stuff like that, which back in the day you didn't get it in your nice little Thai textbook. you and I are going to look back when we're old, which is not now, and we're going to see this period of history as a time of really big social change. big global melting pot that they sang about in the 60s. It's starting to happen in a vastly different way. And there is a big kickback, against the beige western idea, that everything has to be westernized. I actually know Thai women, Thai mums here in Chiang Mai, who think English is a waste of time. Teaching your kids Chinese is smart. Teaching your kids English is like a second rung priority. And, 15 years ago you could only get American breakfast here. Suddenly now you can, there's all kinds of shabu shops and all sorts of Korean barbecues and interesting foods coming in from other cultures. And I think it's so interesting watching the different waves of people come and the waves of people go. A lot of the old people that I knew back then have either died or left. It's becoming economically different to live here. It's not the cheap place it once was. this year we're going to see a mass exodus of older expats.

Ash: 24:47

Why?

Marike: 24:48

The change in banking regulations, tax rules, the residence laws. There's an awful lot of people who live here and say I live in Chiang Mai, but actually they still have a house back where they are and they have their banking and everything neatly set up the way they do, the rule that now says after a hundred and however many days you're a resident of Thailand suddenly means you're no longer a resident of your primary country. And I think in the next two or three years they're going to discover that their entitlements to health care and social services are going to diminish in their original countries. And that they hadn't planned on that. I know someone right now who's had to leave Chiang Mai, who's rented out their Thai house, and has had to go back with their Thai wife back to Australia to qualify for a pension. They have to live there for two years. But they don't have an income because when they were living here as happily early retirees, they were living off the residential income from their rental in Australia that they

Ash: 25:39

own.

Marike: 25:39

But now they're having to live in Australia for two years on the resident, on the income from their tie house and it's not cutting

Ash: 25:44

No, that's not going to work.

Marike: 25:46

And I know quite a few people who are suddenly having to do this. They won't get the pension if they're not resident in their country for so many years. And as countries are changing their rules, the people who left and came here 30 years ago are suddenly finding that set up for their old age isn't cutting it. Same with health insurance. I do believe that in the next four to five years, all of us are going to be required to have a pretty decent level of health care.

Ash: 26:09

And not rely on the Thai,

Marike: 26:11

GoFundMes.

Ash: 26:13

Sure. Actually, I did have a conversation recently with Andy Williams who runs CNX Insure, and we talked about health insurance, and it's a fundamental requirement for me at my stage, because if my wife, my children, or myself got injured, or, God forbid got a terminal disease, I couldn't fund it here. I couldn't pay for that without insurance. it's a bit of a trade off. one piece of advice was if you don't want to buy insurance, make sure that you're actually putting some provisions away for that. And I just don't think that would happen with me.

Marike: 26:43

can't get insurance. had cancer when I was 27.

Ash: 26:46

You can't get

Marike: 26:47

Well, I can but it's so insanely expensive. It's not actually worth it. It would be cheaper to pay cash at the hospital.

Ash: 26:53

So is that your strategy that you do actually try to save in a bank account to protect yourself?

Marike: 26:58

And build the business to such a degree that I have other safeguards. But there are more and more people like me who are getting serious illnesses younger who are not qualifying for health insurance. And that's becoming a whole issue, like then what do you do? primary strategy is to live well and live healthy, And so I do things like I access the cannabis clinic at Nakhonping Hospital, it's fantastic. I did have surgery last year on my face for a malignancy removal and it was pretty severe. A friend lent me the money for the actual surgery, I had to literally put the cash on the table, it was a lot. And But by and large, it's still cheaper than it would have been to have insurance. so it depends. we had this scenario quite some years ago. My Thai daughter had a, has an uncle who was dying of kidney disease. And he was 56, I think, at the time. And Nui, my ex husband, said to me, he We need to go and visit Ajay sir, because he's probably going to die soon. And I said, okay, so Ploy was a baby then and I took her with me to meet the uncle. And he was a skeleton on a floor mat on the floor. He was, couldn't walk properly. He had, all his teeth had fallen out and his wife brought him a bowl of white rice soup while we were sitting there. And I stopped her, I said, what? I said, the guy has diabetes and late stage kidney and you're giving him white rice soup. And she said, Oh, we don't know what else to cook for him. And, there was no one teaching them diabetes education. I said to her, would you let me cook for him? Because we lived not far away. so I started to prepare him blender soupy things with chicken and things like potato that he could eat, sweet potato. And the lovely people from Kasem shop got some brags in for me, which is a non sodium, salty, tasty sort of sauce thing, but it's a, it, diabetics are allowed to use it. He lived for three years. He was actually able to sit up again. He was actually able to talk again. And he had three years of fairly decent quality of life before he died. And that was just one example and he was at death's door the day I met And so I do think good natural health is enabling a lot of people to have better choices. And so that's my primary choice. It's to live well and live healthy, and then obviously build the business to such a degree that I get to stay on the payroll forever. Because I will, and this is the other thing that's going to happen in Chiang Mai, a lot of people don't qualify for pensions anywhere. I don't qualify for a pension in my birth country, I don't qualify for a pension in my passport country. the only option you really have in the end is to build your own pension, to build your own empire, your own little business. very important to me that what I do has longevity. I'm blessed in the sense that my daughter owns our business. So I don't have any fights with my Thai shareholder. And I have no issue of putting my heart and soul into it because I don't have any resentment that she would become wealthy if I work hard. And so I think a lot of businesses where there is animosity between the Thai owner and the foreigner who's, who constantly feels that, they don't put their heart and soul into something because they think, what am I really doing is making these Thai people wealthy. But when it's your kid, It's a game changer actually it's been real gift to me because it's like I don't want to retire. I don't need to retire I'm happy. I'll just work a little slower if I don't feel like it But I'm absolutely delighted to put my heart and soul into the business in the note Not in the knowledge that my daughter and her Thai family will benefit from it that gives you a whole different mindset. But that's the original Asian mindset if you think about it. It's the way Chinese people run their businesses. It's the way all small businesses have run here forever.

Ash: 30:16

it down to your family?

Marike: 30:18

Yes, and engage your family and work with people that you know. And so we don't have staff problems like a lot of foreign owned businesses because we know the people that know people who know more people and they like to work with people they know.

Ash: 30:31

Yeah, good for you. We've kind of learned that you are a go to person. You are, you've been here a long time. You understand the local culture. You're very respectful of the local culture. You've also touched on social media and how that's changing things. I just think that leads us so nicely on to the Chiang Mai expat and locals living in Chiang Mai Facebook group How long have you been? Am I right in saying you're the administrator?

Marike: 30:58

am, I'm the only administrator.

Ash: 31:00

The only administrator so how long have you been doing that?

Marike: 31:03

that? Since about seven months now. Okay,

Ash: 31:05

Okay, so not long how did that arrive on your doorstep?

Marike: 31:09

As many of the expat groups have horrendous amounts of negativity, spamming, aggression, people feeling uncomfortable to ask questions, a lot of name calling. And my friend Travis actually owns the group, and Travis is a friend and a former customer of mine. He used to work at the tattoo studio that we make tattoo balm for. So I got to know Travis personally pretty well. And so Travis approached me and he said, I think we need a different approach to the way we admin this thing. when I took over the group, it had 32, 000 members. And in the space of seven ish months, I've grown it to nearly 68, 000. reason that it's grown so fast is the first thing I do is I change the rules a bit. I basically ban people if they're rude, I suspend people if they're mean I put some filters on that if you put in a comment with swear words or you say certain words that it automatically just deletes and declines you. And then the other thing I did was I tried to start seeding more positive input into the group so that instead of always hearing negative ranty things about Chiang Mai, if I see positive stuff, I post it into the group. So for instance, yesterday, Kuntan, who had donated 100, 000 baht to 69 villages if they attained their AQI standards for the next month, I think it's a fantastic story. People want to say all the worst things they do about Thai people, but that is such leadership. And I think if you consistently put good seeds in the middle of a field full of weeds. At a certain point, the weeds give up a little bit and they don't really get the kind of bad boy vibe that they were looking for. And then a lot of people started to engage with the group. I actually start getting fan mail. It's really quite scary. I walk into Remping and people say, Oh my God, you're that lady from the thing. People have sent me gifts and thanked me for making it a safer space, which I find really mind blowing.

Ash: 32:55

I love to hear that. For me personally, I can't tell one Facebook group from another. So to hear you talking about yours and how you're making it different, I think I'm part of quite a few different Facebook groups.

Marike: 33:08

are. Yeah, Chiang Mai Expats and Locals. It has the black banner with the little elephant.

Ash: 33:19

It does.

Marike: 33:20

And we're probably double the size of all the other groups.

Ash: 33:23

so when I checked, you had 67.

Marike: 33:26

Yes, we're nearly at

Ash: 33:27

members. Nearly 68. So it's going up.

Marike: 33:30

Goes up, we currently have what we call a restriction. I allowed one post to go through recently. Someone was asking for a a Filipino salesperson. And I approved it Facebook for being racist. And so the group is currently under restriction, which means less people see the group than they normally would. normally, when we're not under restriction, we gain about 800 to 1, 000 members a week.

Ash: 33:55

Do people have to be approved to be a member or can they just

Marike: 33:59

They just joined.

Ash: 34:00

just join. That helps, I think. Wow. What is most of your time spent doing when you're administrating that group? I

Marike: 34:07

I approve everything. so we basically have the admin filter set up pretty tightly, so there are whole bunches of things that just go immediately to the junk bin. And occasionally I have to engage with people. That's pretty cool. I mean there was a guy this morning who wanted to post, it looked like a Chinese spam post, there were, it was a guy trying to sell plastic water guns for Songkran, and the pictures had Chinese writing on them, I looked at his website, I couldn't find him I looked at his profile and it didn't say that he lived in Chiang Mai, so I declined him twice. And then I sent him a message saying, can you confirm who you are and what you're doing? And it turns out that he is in the old city. He just doesn't know how to use Facebook very well because he's Chinese and they don't do Facebook. we went through and he edited the post and we had a nice chat over tea this morning. And I now have a new friend in Chiang Mai

Ash: 34:50

That sounds incredibly time consuming. It

Marike: 34:53

it is and it's not. I use social media for my business, so I check it every hour or whatever and whatever I'm doing. If I'm at the traffic light, absolutely I do.

Ash: 35:01

in Nyman.

Marike: 35:02

Absolutely.

Ash: 35:03

what do most people want to get, what do they use the Facebook group for? What do they try and get out of it?

Marike: 35:09

Everyone wants the same thing what I think most people are looking for is engagement with local people. So the problem is that the internet is very outdated. So if you Google up, for instance, yoga, Chiang Mai on Google, you'll find out half the yoga schools that are listed or have gone out of business. They don't have their hours listed. They've moved three times since they set up their Google pin. There's a lot of that. And so people are looking for current relevant information about Chiang Mai and they're also looking for personal connection. there's one theme that I think Chiang Mai has going for it is isolation. We have a hugely isolated groups of people who are probably the most fragmented city I've ever seen. You know, And I've traveled a lot around the world, but Chiang Mai doesn't really have a center. The old city used to be a bit of a center before COVID and it's not anymore. It's an absolute wasteland in there at the moment. if you really look at where do the people live, many people I know never go to the old city. They hang out in their little neighbourhoods, in their little enclaves people are pretty isolated and when they're required to do something or learn or be somewhere that's out of their comfort zone, they've no idea where to go. saw someone yesterday posted about the steam wand on their coffee thing had broken. People have questions. It's like, where do you buy a professional microphone? If your microphone breaks, where do you get it service? Where do you get your exercise bike service? once you start thinking, there are always solutions to things, but It's not always obvious. And a lot of Thai businesses don't advertise in English. They also don't use websites particularly well. And most Thai businesses have social media that's in Thai. And so there's this huge kind of us and them thing. And so the group becomes a whole kind of, does anyone know where I can get size 23 shoes or whatever it is? And we know where that is down at the back of Kud Furong. There's a fantastic clearance place. It has large men's

Ash: 36:57

Okay, I've been there, but I didn't know that was the answer to that. have my size.

Marike: 37:02

they do. That's just remaindered stock. Anything large get ends up over

Ash: 37:06

Yeah, I know the place.

Marike: 37:08

a bra supermarket outlet on the highway to Lampang. If you didn't know it was there, you would never know, but it's like a clearance house for all kinds of large, weird sized underwear.

Ash: 37:17

It's good that there is this place that you can connect with people and get the local intelligence. That's really the philosophy behind it.

Marike: 37:25

Yeah. And the local color. So people do know that you can go in and look for what are the 10 best Chiang Mai, The SEO, the way it works, you will get a digital nomad level answer because they pay to have the answer in SEO. But it's not necessarily where a local person would drink their coffee.

Ash: 37:42

I see.

Marike: 37:43

And so Travis and I are working at the moment, we have set up a website that we're in the process of populating. we're probably the only group that's big enough to actually ask opinions. So we've had two polls so far that I'm in the process of writing up and uploading and Travis is playing with the layout and our website will be going live soon. Where we ask our people to vote, like we did the first one was what are the best places to drink coffee in the Old City. So you're in the Old City, where do the locals drink coffee? And out of that I found four places that I've never had coffee before and I thought interesting. Because they change. And you get in the habit of going to the same three places and then we had a few grumpy people saying, I never go to the old city. Why are we having this stupid poll? But if you have a client in town or you have guests arrive from overseas and you want to go to the old city and you don't know where to take them these things are really handy.

Ash: 38:29

Yeah, I loved your opinion seeking polls

Marike: 38:32

Cool. We've got lots of them

Ash: 38:34

Yeah, there was one the other day that I was just like, oh, this is brilliant. I

Marike: 38:37

night one.

Ash: 38:38

yeah People could suggest their own but also you could vote on more than one and it was like where are the best but restaurants? And for me that list is gold

Marike: 38:48

of those planned, and I'm actually sitting down this weekend putting up a few new ones. And run those every few months. So you know, the results change. So for instance, the 10 best coffee spots in the Old City. We're obviously going to have one, one of the 10 best. coffee destinations out in the hills, the best ten places to go for a Sunday drive, there are thousands of things that people ask about, but we want to do it in tiny sections. And we're using questions from the group. So people say to me, how do you come up with these stupid random polls? I've been tabulating the questions people ask in the group. So the common questions that have been popping up all the time are what we have the polls about.

Ash: 39:25

Yeah, because that's what people want to know.

Marike: 39:27

and so we figure that the best thing to do is to publish those on the website. So the next time someone says, where can I get a coffee in the old city? That's decent. We can link it to our site and say, these are the answers that our expat community gave. Because my experience or your experience isn't the only experience and we want to give that more rounded general view. It's really important.

Ash: 39:48

I get that and I get why like it on Facebook because that platform is just so easy and convenient.

Marike: 39:53

Unless you are Chineese and it before. That's true. Is

Ash: 39:56

that's true. Is that why you want to develop a website?

Marike: 39:58

out of Chi of Chiang Mai who are not Facebook savvy, who are uncomfortable using Facebook, or who really don't know how. A lot. Our Japanese friends don't use it as much either. Same with the Koreans. They're not really big Facebook people. It's probably the easiest platform to run it on right now, but we think having a website where people can go and ask a question, it really matters. at the moment I scribble down the questions that pop up again and again and we're tabulating polls around those things. And unfortunately the polls are only allowed to run for three days, so we're going to do them quite often.

Ash: 40:31

three days is the maximum on Facebook.

Marike: 40:32

For a poll, so I can't run it for a week and get dis, so you know I have to choose the day I run it on carefully.

Ash: 40:38

Okay, interesting.

Marike: 40:40

peaks in the afternoons, after lunch.

Ash: 40:41

I'm learning stuff all the time. Yeah, didn't know that.

Marike: 40:44

So don't put your overnight social media, your digital media thing out in the morning, put it out in the afternoon.

Ash: 40:51

Okay, good advice. If you're listening, my digital marketing manager take that advice. Facebook is for a certain generation, kind of like my kids aren't on Facebook,

Marike: 41:01

My daughter's not either. I have to message her and say, please go on to Facebook and congratulate your Thai cousin on her graduation today. And since she's in Holland, so my Thai daughter is studying physiotherapy in Holland, she has pretty much stopped using social media altogether because culturally it's just not a really big deal over there. Instagram for messaging, but she doesn't post anything.

Ash: 41:21

Let me just unwind that in Holland, you're saying social media isn't as a bigger thing as it is here in Thailand.

Marike: 41:27

And so someone who's in Holland, who's coming to Thailand, who would probably first look at a website, they don't jump on easily onto social media. My daughter doesn't use it at all. I have to literally bleep her audibly to go and look at her message thread because she doesn't look at it for days on end. She's 20. You would think that young people are on social media all the time. And she said to me just last week, she said, mama, this is so weird. In Holland, people do stuff, they go for bike rides, they play board games, they eat together, they walk, they do stuff, and it's a huge shift for her mentally to live in a western country.

Ash: 42:01

That actually sounds like heaven to me. I'm always on social media. I use social media for my business. When I see my children and my wife overusing social media or being addicted to their phones, it upsets me. I've had to relax my screen time at home because it was making enemies with my own family. I'm a great believer in the Tech Shabbat, which is an initiative that came out of California, which was one day a week, everybody put your phones down and let's do something together. Let's do something community based. And I really try and push that. And I really limit my exposure to particularly the phone. But to social media generally, but saying that even with that attitude, I'm still racking up quite a few hours every single day.

Marike: 42:47

me too. And it's a cultural thing it's partly because we're entrepreneurs and so our business is on social media. But so my screen goes black and white at 9 p. m. It works really well, it's

Ash: 42:58

does. Let's just share that trick with people. So you can easily go into your settings and you can turn your phone to go black and white. So your screen goes black and white. why would you do that?

Marike: 43:09

Well I do it at 9pm because it helps me to sleep better, so the vibration, the colours off the screen have a lesser effect on your brain at night, if it's in black and white than it does if it's in colour. I listen to a fantastic podcast, The Diary of a CEO, he has a fantastic episode about sleep. one of the guests was talking about how if you turn your light off an hour before you need to go to sleep, your brain actually starts tuning you down for sleep. And it changes the way your brain waves work. so I turned my phone on into black and white mode at 9pm. I don't admin the group at night. Things rack up. If they rack up.

Ash: 43:43

I think Thailand has the biggest adoption and usage of Facebook and social media. in the world. Why do Thai people, in your opinion, spend so much time on their phone?

Marike: 43:54

it's a bit like what I would call the kid in the lolly shop. when social media came, there was a great divide of wealth. You know, There were the wealthy expats who came with all their money and their nice houses and the Mubans and then there were the Thai people. a lot of Thai people who never had the ability to travel started to see the world through Facebook. people got friends on Facebook that lived in other cultures who were here on holidays, they became friends. And Thailand's also been very culturally cut off, unlike other countries around us, for instance Burma, which was very English. Thailand has been extraordinarily culturally a monoculture to some degree. Thai people are, they're inherently curious, but they're also very polite, so they don't want to ask you what do you wear to the beach in Australia, but they will go on social media to have a look.

Ash: 44:41

for themselves.

Marike: 44:42

it's discreet, it's quiet, and they can learn a lot.

Ash: 44:45

Brilliant. Thank you. Can I ask you now just some quick fire questions? Can you describe yourself in three words?

Marike: 44:52

resilient, resourceful, tenacious The

Ash: 45:00

to, if,

Marike: 45:01

place I come back to if I'm really down or if I really just want to find my center. At the back of Wat Phra Seng, there's the original old little wooden temple And it has beautiful artwork that's historical and gorgeous And I sit on the floor there and I feel a sense of continuity in that place.

Ash: 45:16

Ah, that's beautiful. And what's your favorite activity? When you're not moderating.

Marike: 45:21

I would say hanging out eating. it's a social national pastime in Thailand.

Ash: 45:26

Do you have any absolute favorites?

Marike: 45:28

I do. I really like the duck soup place along the Ping River. I like Madam Koh is my current favorite.

Ash: 45:34

Nice, I was there last week. And shall I tell you why I went? Apart from the fact that I met the owners at the Tantawang Festival and had a very nice time with them. But one of the reasons why I went was because I read your poll, Yeah. What's your best memory from living here? What's the happy time?

Marike: 45:50

One of my favorite memories is when my daughter was about four, my birthday's in November and Loi Kratong is always in November. And my daughter was absolutely enamored with the fact that all of Chiang Mai had done this for my birthday. And so we're walking around doing all the lanterns and the, all that stuff. And it was a really big Loy Krathong back then with all massive sky lanterns and fireworks. It was full on. And she's walking around saying, Mama, wow, it's your birthday. People have done all this for your birthday.

Ash: 46:19

Yeah, wonderful. You didn't need to correct her on that one. We talked a little bit about the past of Chiang Mai and how do you see the future? You've said it's become like an international melting pot that a lot more Asian influences are coming in.

Marike: 46:32

I see Chiang Mai spreading enormously. A la Bangkok for instance.

Ash: 46:36

So

Marike: 46:37

If you drive around the outer ring road, I do think in five years We're going to see large mubans all the way out past doi Chiang Mai is becoming a hub its airport is doubling in size over the next little while it's a logical place for a lot of businesses to put their regional offices do

Ash: 46:52

you know about that airport expansion? Because I've heard that there was going to be a second

Marike: 46:56

are about

Ash: 46:57

Yes, they have an

Marike: 46:59

every second year they change their mind about that. It's been on the cards as long as I've

Ash: 47:02

it's that yes or no? Are we having an out of city

Marike: 47:05

city airport? say at some point, but I'm guessing not

Ash: 47:08

not soon. What's the best advice that you've ever received?

Marike: 47:12

Don't hang on to what you let go of. you let go of something and then you move to a new place and then you try to recreate the old place where you were, like, embrace what you have in this moment enjoy the memory of it, but don't try to keep bringing it with you. That's

Ash: 47:26

good, solid advice, What's the kindest thing that you've done for someone recently?

Marike: 47:30

for International Women's Day, I worked with Lona Anderson to run the International Women's Day event where we raised some nice money for people needing scholarships and for some children with AIDS that was a huge job.

Ash: 47:41

Thank you. What makes you sad here in Chiang

Marike: 47:44

people's lack of curiosity. Makes me sad. People come to Chiang Mai and then they complain about, Doing things that are uncomfortable. that curiosity we seem to be losing it a bit because we get it through social media and we think that's the equal. So we've seen a picture of a proper meal over there and then we just eat our mama noodles over here and we believe we've touched it, but we haven't. the genuine curiosity for the real thing is diminishing among people.

Ash: 48:10

what could we do to help people open their eyes and be more curious?

Marike: 48:14

Oh, turn off your social media.

Ash: 48:17

We're agreeing on

Marike: 48:18

Stop having a plastic experience and have a real one.

Ash: 48:20

Sure, we're agreeing on that and we're also slightly hypocritical because of the amount of social media that we use. But genuinely, I think you are trying to use social media for the best and to keep connecting people and support people and expand this group. So I just say thank you very much for giving us your time today. Thank you for telling me all your stories. It's been fascinating to meet you. I've really enjoyed it. Thanks so much. Bye bye.