More than looking at a flower
We look beyond a beautiful flower. Experience, science and responsibility come together to help adult readers understand cannabis.
Before the shop, before the website
Before there was a shop or a website, I was living with stress without really recognising it, and getting very little sleep. Four or five hours felt like a lot; some nights I managed only three. I had been through difficult periods of illness when my aunt’s partner, who is from Hawaii, suggested trying cannabis. When I did, I felt better. That personal experience was what first made me want to understand cannabis more deeply.
This is a personal recollection, including remarks as I remember them from that time. It is not treatment advice or evidence that someone else will have the same experience.
Hybrid and our days at Think Park
Later, as Thailand’s cannabis scene began opening up, I joined two friends, Ram and Sembei, to open a shop. Sembei and another group of friends already ran a shop called Hybrid. Our branch grew out of that connection, with Ram, Sembei, me and a wider circle of friends involved.
The shop was at Hia Tan’s Think Park in Chiang Mai, near the MAYA intersection. I lived there for a while and became close to him and his lovely team. As I remember it, I had the chance to introduce him to cannabis for the first time, and I recall him saying, “I’ve spent so much on sleeping pills, but this has helped a lot.” That is my recollection of what he said at the time. Those were fun days; he and his friends even jokingly called me “the professor.” When we discussed whether a project should be in Bangkok or Chiang Mai, we eventually settled on Chiang Mai and Think Park, the place where we had met.
Ram, and the friendship that stayed
Running the shop gave me the chance to get to know Ram properly. To me, he is a grower with the curiosity of a strain hunter: humble, shaped by good teachers and open to a wide range of conversations. When we talked about using CO₂ in cultivation, that discussion was unfamiliar to some of the people we met, and we sometimes encountered pushback. What I appreciate about Ram is the depth of his understanding and his ability to make difficult ideas easy to grasp through comparisons.
Even after I stopped running the shop, Ram and I stayed close. He remained in the industry and would occasionally share some flower for me to try. I have also spent a month or several months at a time away from cannabis. The times I return to it with Ram tend to be when work is quieter and I have room to relax. My time running the shop ended; the friendship did not.
A website built with love
Those memories brought me back to a domain I had registered years earlier, while running the shop in Chiang Mai. Today I want to use it to record the journey Ram and I have shared. I am not returning to sell products, and this is not about showing how much I know or proving I am better than anyone else. I simply want to tell the stories of what we have encountered, the people we have met and the time we have shared.
The real reason is that I want to make friends, meet new people and take part in cannabis events and community activities. If we can be a small part of making a good event or a good idea happen, that is enough. Whether our role is big or small matters less than belonging to the same community, enjoying ourselves and sharing with one another. This website was built with love, as a record of my journey with Ram. There are plenty of unusual, interesting stories still to tell. Let’s see what we can make of it.
If you would like to support us, say hello or invite us to be part of something, you can reach us through the Instagram links on this site. Bring us along, pitch an idea or tell us where we might be able to help. We are easy to talk to, down-to-earth and always up for a laugh. As we like to say: “ไม่เติมก็ฮา” — we’re funny even without getting high.
An editorial without flower or seed sales
BUDS THAILAND does not sell cannabis flowers or seeds. We are an editorial publication, committed to making our sources and relevant relationships visible.
The Language of the Flower
Reading a flower starts with attention: structure, trichomes, aroma and the story of drying and curing. A photograph invites questions; a documented origin gives the answers weight.
Sensation & Genetics
Sensation & Genetics connects sensory records with documented lineage. We distinguish producer-reported names from observations, and never identify a cultivar from its appearance alone.
The Shadow Effects
The Shadow Effects means being honest about discomfort. Anxiety, paranoia, body heaviness and lingering effects belong in the record alongside pleasant impressions, without turning them into a sales pitch.
Thailand and the future we imagine
Our founder sees Thailand as a potential global centre of cannabis knowledge and production. The mission is to help the next generation of adult professionals understand its people, technology and responsibilities. This is a vision, not a market-share claim.
