A Golden Week in Pattaya: Ceramics, Cannabis Farms, a 3D Artist, and a Stranger Who Recognized Me by My Bamboo Pipe

Something happened that suddenly cut down how often I can get to Pattaya. I’ll write about that another time. What I decided was that I’d spend the last Golden Week of my thirties in Pattaya regardless. Not as a vacation. Honestly it was closer to a period of grinding through something difficult. I’d been genuinely stuck on cannabis bonsai for months. The full story is in the article “The cannabis bonsai confusion cleared: going to Pattaya to find driftwood and ceramics“, so read that first if you haven’t.

Something had finally started to come into focus for me around cannabis bonsai, which felt good. But the downside was that some of the driftwood and ceramics I already had at home no longer worked with the new direction. And with the debt situation I’m in, buying new ceramics wasn’t really an option. So when I saw on social media that Kanpai Reuse Pattaya was running a 90% off sale, I checked the time. 8 AM. Opening was 9 AM according to the post, so I decided to leave at 8:30.

Kiefez Strainz is the premium flower line from Kiefez, different from their pre-rolls in that it’s pure flower for people who want to roll their own. Indoor-grown to GACP standards, top-shelf quality, with each strain designed for a specific aromatic and experiential profile. Fresh lots come in regularly. The whole Kiefez brand is built around experience design, so Strainz gives you the ability to choose by flavor and effect rather than just picking flower off a shelf.

Hunting for ceramics takes real mental preparation. I always roll a couple of joints before heading out. This time I picked Mango Haze from Kiefez Strainz. Ripe mango sweetness with a hint of spice and herb underneath, bright and tropical. Perfect for a daytime smoke before going somewhere hot and difficult. The dread of fighting the heat faded, and I rode the bike to Kanpai Reuse Pattaya feeling okay about the day.

Kanpai Reuse Pattaya: Hunting for Cannabis Bonsai Vessels

I called a bike and headed to Kanpai Reuse Pattaya, about 20 minutes north of central Pattaya. It’s a second-hand market that regularly imports containers of Japanese goods and sells them here.

Anyone who comes to Thailand is usually surprised by how much Japanese stuff is everywhere. The volume of Japanese second-hand goods flowing into the Thai market feels like it grows every year. Japan has a culture of taking care of things, which has given Japanese second-hand goods a strong international reputation, and the scale of the Japanese second-hand market in Thailand is bigger than most people would guess. Kanpai Reuse Pattaya isn’t even in a great location, and every time I go it’s packed.

The driver got a bit lost, so I arrived just after 9. There were already close to 100 people inside. I ran straight to the ceramics section at the back. I’d actually done a scouting visit two days earlier and had some pieces marked in my head, so I grabbed the ones I definitely wanted first.

After that it was working through 50-plus cardboard boxes one by one. Add up all the ceramics across all those boxes and you’re easily looking at over a thousand pieces. It’s a concentration exercise. Even if you find something good, it might be chipped or cracked, or the proportions might be just slightly off for bonsai use. And there’s always the risk of something slipping out of your hands.

The point being: finding the right ceramic for cannabis bonsai is much harder than it sounds.

I wanted to take photos but it’s first-come-first-served so there was no time. I was silent and focused the entire time. I can’t go through everything I found, so here are five pieces from this haul.

Shigaraki Ware: Green Glaze Kiln-Change Round Jar

I wanted this one the moment I saw it. Shigaraki’s characteristic soft rice-colored clay with copper green spreading slowly into the surface, like it’s dissolving in. Just looking at it gives you a quiet feeling, like standing in mountain fog in the early morning. The white droplets at the center sit like dew falling from branches. You can feel the maker’s sense of playfulness in it.

Tamba Ware: Tenmoku Glaze Round Jar

The gradient on this Tamba piece is genuinely beautiful. The raw fired clay as a base, deep tenmoku black wrapping the body, and a soft lapis-blue gradient opening toward the rim like a dawn sky. The crystal glaze at the rim catches light and shifts depending on the angle. Tamba has a strong earthy quality and this piece uses that as the foundation while the glaze does something completely different on top.

Tsuboya Ware (Yachimun): Basket-Weave Carved Round Jar

This one has a presence that hits you immediately. It’s a piece by Kinjo Matsu, a female ceramicist from Okinawa’s Tsuboya tradition, made when she was 80. The basket-weave carving covers the entire body, built up through the same kind of careful, repetitive hand work as weaving an actual basket. Run your fingers over it and the texture is satisfying in a specific way. The warm amber tone that Okinawan clay produces, combined with the carving that feels both precise and free at the same time, reflects decades of skill and instinct simultaneously.

Tsuboya Ware (Yachimun): Oribe Glaze Flow Tea Bowl

Another Okinawa piece, this one with turquoise and black colliding and dripping down a white clay body. The turquoise at the rim is bright like open sky, and the black glaze hangs down from it like stalactites, disappearing into the lower body. The traditional spiral foot ring on the base shows the care that went into the work.

Also a Tsuboya piece: a sake cup with line carving and blue color inlay. The number of steps involved in finishing something like this is obvious just from looking at it. Art made within a small world is genuinely delicate and beautiful, the same as bonsai. I’ve loved tea over coffee since my New York days, and lately I’ve been drinking out of sake cups regularly. This one went straight into that rotation.

ちょっと事件発生です。文化功労者にも選ばれた戦後萩焼界の至宝”吉賀大眉”のぐい呑みを見つけてしまった。吉賀大眉は萩焼を「芸術」の域まで高めたとされる非常に人気のある作家。萩焼は使うほどに味わいが増す「萩の七化け」が魅力的。大麻とお茶の組み合わせは抜群だけど、陶器変わるとさらに良い pic.twitter.com/aPGlLkRLT9

— Kei | 価値を再定義する大麻盆栽家 (@smallnycer) May 2, 2026

Today’s most surprising find was a sake cup by Yoshiga Taibi, one of the postwar masters of Hagi ware and a recipient of the Order of Cultural Merit. The color, the proportions, everything about it is beautiful. Yoshiga Taibi is credited with bringing Hagi ware to the level of fine art. Hagi ware has the quality known as “the seven transformations of Hagi,” where the surface gradually changes and deepens through use. Changing the vessel changes the experience of drinking from it. The same tea tastes different. I felt that immediately.

Bizen Ware: Natural Ash Glaze Tea Bowl

Personally, my favorite piece from this whole haul. Bizen ware doesn’t use applied glaze. Instead, ash from the wood-burning kiln drifts onto the surface during firing, settles, and melts into the clay to become glaze naturally. The “natural ash glaze” is what makes Bizen what it is. The surface is made by fire, earth, and ash meeting. It gets better with use. That’s the kind of piece this is.

Beyond the ceramics and sake cups, I also picked up some kimono obi sashes for wrapping cups and a few wooden display pieces. Over 30 items total. Things that would normally run around 6,300 baht came out to about 700 baht with the 90% discount. It’s genuinely hard to believe you can get ceramics like this at that price.

The hard part comes after. During a big sale like this, staff stop wrapping things in newspaper, so you do it yourself. Ceramics break easily. I moved to a quieter spot, pulled out the bags and towels I’d brought, and spent the next however-long packing everything as tightly as I could without gaps, completely drenched in sweat. When I finally looked at the time it was already past noon.

It was around then that I remembered a cannabis farmer friend had told me a while back to come by when the flowering-stage plants were looking good. Since I was already out I decided to stop by on the way home.

Stopping By the Tropical Thunder Cannabis Farm

I called a bike, heavy bags and all, and headed over to the Tropical Thunder cannabis farm I wrote about in the article on Pattaya’s fully indoor living soil cannabis farm.

Tropical Thunder is a group of professional cannabis growers with over 15 years of cultivation experience, running a fully indoor living soil operation in Pattaya. I met them during the two years I spent in Pattaya working as an organic cannabis farmer myself. Even after moving to Bangkok, we’ve stayed close.

The smell when you open the flowering room door, and the sight of all those plants, calms me down every single time. I hadn’t been in a while, so I stood there for about five minutes just looking at them. The more you learn about cannabis, the stranger it feels that it’s classified as a drug.

Recently there was also an announcement that cannabis plant compounds can be used as a plastic alternative material that withstands boiling water and stretches to 1,600% of its weight. Cannabis has so many applications. And yet, in this era, it’s treated as a drug. But I was born into this era, so there’s no point in fighting that. I live in a country where cannabis is legal, and I do what I need to do.

大麻草の成分が原料。沸騰した湯にも耐え、1600%伸びるプラスチック代替素材を開発https://t.co/bOI4JopBGX

麻の一種で向精神作用がない「大麻草」を原料に、沸騰した湯にも耐え、自重の1,600%まで伸びるプラスチック代替素材が開発された… pic.twitter.com/QqtXJMK82o

— カラパイア (@karapaia) May 5, 2026

While I was thinking about all that, one of them said the Fruit Stand from the last harvest was at peak right now and offered to smoke together. We chatted for about 15 minutes. First time trying this strain, but Tropical Thunder’s cannabis is as reliably good as always.

Fruit Stand is a daytime strain: ripe mixed fruit sweetness with bright citrus and a hint of cream underneath. Juicy and uplifting. If you’re heading to Pattaya and you like cannabis, make time for the Tropical Thunder dispensary in Jomtien.

When I was packing up to head home, a friend’s face came to mind. I hadn’t seen him in a while and wanted to catch up. And honestly, with him, we always seem to cross paths at exactly the moment it feels like we need to. So I sent a message and went to find him.

Stopping By My Friend NUGGSY’s Place

I have two close friends in Pattaya. One of them is NUGGSY, a creator around my age who makes cannabis-related 3D models. He’s actually one of the reasons I started cannabis bonsai. Two years ago he told me he thought my bonsai was something worth pursuing. Around the same time, he started getting into 3D modeling. Both of us with no money, pushing each other to make good work. That period feels far away now.

He’s also been finding some clarity on his direction lately, and we spent some time sharing where we’re each headed. Laughing about being at “the next stage.” We both know the road ahead is still hard. But we talked about making it through together, and sat around for about an hour.

By the time I noticed it was past 6 PM. My head and body were both tired, so I went home to drop off the bags and then went to the sauna.

I love saunas. Especially after a smoke: sit in the heat and let your mind run, then drop into cold water and feel everything that was scattered start to come together. It’s the best thing I’ve found for clearing my head.

My sauna style is completely solo. There were other people around but I paid zero attention to them, just went into my own world. About two hours, then I felt good again. On the way out I decided to stop by TAIMATON 大麻堂 to pet the cats. I also had a planning conversation I wanted to have with them, since I was supposed to visit their cannabis farm the next day to make bonsai.

I was checking the joints in my Aroimark case at the entrance when someone behind me suddenly said in Japanese: “Are you Kei, the cannabis bonsai artist?”

I spend most of my life in English-speaking environments, so hearing Japanese out of nowhere made me turn around with probably a confused look on my face.

Standing there was a Japanese man in his late forties, heavily tattooed. He said he’d noticed the bamboo smoking pipe I was holding and knew immediately who I was. Apparently he’d been following the work on social media and in media coverage back in Japan, and when he arrived in Thailand he’d already gone to see the cannabis bonsai on display in Thong Lo. I was surprised, and genuinely glad that someone was finding meaning in what I was doing. He also turned out to be connected to some of the few Japanese cannabis people I actually know here, so I decided to hear him out.

He’d been smoking cannabis for over 25 years. He cared about taste and aroma, and was looking for good cannabis with good value for the price. He’d been to Pattaya three times already and said the Tropical Thunder cannabis on his last visit had been incredible.

Finding good cannabis in Pattaya isn’t easy. Most of the shops here are running a business, but actual cannabis enthusiast owners and farmers are rare. The full breakdown is in the article on Pattaya’s recommended dispensaries.

While I was thinking through recommendations, the conversation turned to TAIMATON 大麻堂. I’d been heading there anyway, so I asked if he wanted to come along. He said yes and started gathering his things.

It reminded me of New York, where bumping into a Japanese traveler on the street and spending the day together was just something that happened sometimes. I’d gotten out of that habit with age, but this felt right.

Cats at TAIMATON 大麻堂

Cola was at the door when we arrived. She doesn’t run even when you pick her up, which is the best quality a cat can have. I left my new acquaintance standing there and spent about five minutes with the cat immediately upon arrival. I do feel a little bad about that.

While I was doing that, one of the staff was walking him through the current product selection. In the car he’d mentioned that not speaking English made it hard to ask questions at dispensaries. TAIMATON gets a lot of Asian customers who aren’t confident in English, and they’ve built the kind of support around that which makes it actually work. It was good to see.

The owner joined us and we all smoked together. I was acting as interpreter in the middle. At some point he turned to me with a big smile and said “this is genuinely incredible, I can’t believe how lucky I am, I’m so glad I said something.” I understood that feeling. Something similar happened to me in my twenties. Being that openly happy about something is contagious.

The next day I was actually already planning to visit the cannabis farm that TAIMATON operates, to make bonsai there. That was part of why I’d stopped by tonight. On an impulse I asked him if he wanted to come along to a cannabis farm the next morning. He said yes immediately. The TAIMATON crew responded with “any friend of Kei’s is welcome” and that was settled.

So somehow, the next day he was coming with us to the farm. I rode back in the sea breeze feeling good about how the day had ended.

At some point during the evening he’d said he’d heard Japanese people living in Thailand could be sketchy. I told him: nowhere do Japanese people get scammed more reliably than by other Japanese people abroad. There are also people in Thailand who operate in genuinely dangerous ways, so you need sharper instincts here than you would back home. Most of the Japanese people I know in Thailand I could count on one hand. But very occasionally you meet someone who is genuinely good. Travel isn’t about where you go. It’s about who you meet and how you spend the time. The experience you get back depends entirely on that. So keep filtering, and keep looking for good people. Not just Japanese people.

The whole point of travel is that “who you spend your time with and how” changes everything about what the trip becomes.

That’s something I only understand because I’ve been living outside Japan since I was 18. Coming to Thailand just to smoke cannabis is completely fine. But if you can, try being conscious of who you’re with when you do it. Who you share a smoke with changes the experience more than the cannabis does.

Note: This article is based on content originally published on the Japanese edition of OG Times .