Living Experiential Recovery
Irrespective of your substance/ process of choice in terms of addiction, healthy food and drink are a great place to start with experiential learning in recovery. There’s also a very valid reason that we encourage villagers to discover what Chiang Mai has to offer ‘out and about’. Not only are most places relatively cheap, but the overall richness of experience is a powerful component in LER sober living.
The colours, shapes, tastes, sounds and aromas involved with dining, together with the choices we are presented with have a direct bearing on our feelings and mood. Balance-one of the most vital requirements in a recovering addict‘s life – needs to be sought to feed the mind and soul, so we encourage exploring nutritionally.
Food and drink are our most basic needs, so with all of the additional experiential intrigue, we work towards disrupting unhealthy thought patterns that may have taken hold in old eating and drinking haunts, and discover new recovery-based preferences.
At The Next Step we are surrounded by both small, yet sociable hillside villages and popular global visitor attractions. We count ourselves truly blessed by what they offer us: an eclectic showcase of coffee, tea and pancake houses, international restaurants and authentic Thai eateries serving high quality, affordable dishes.
There is a very notable trend towards the experiential in the Chiang Mai food space. Coffee shops and restaurants alike have a strong sense of hand-crafted identity, difference and purpose: original and quirky, yet humble and unpretentious. And places to dine often have a dual purpose. Hands-on learning or immersive entertainment often gets holistically integrated into the environment. So Living Experiential Recovery in the living room of Chiang Mai culture is a great setting to help addicts in their quest for openness and balance.
Since the chic Royal Park Rajupruek area with all of its organic farmland and floral beauty is at the end of our road, we also have access to some of the finest produce available in the country grown in the area. Breakfast or lunch at The Royal Project Kitchen is both a high quality, yet inexpensive experience.
Immediately next door, The Rabbit Union serves healthy fresh juices, a good cup of coffee and simple, tasty Asian and Western small dishes. But, the real pull here is that it is a bunny adventure playground, where vet, Nick and his wife, Eve allow you to pet and feed their brood, who range from a day old, to adult. There are often at least 40 furry friends waiting for us, and even the toughest guys like a cuddle in recovery!
Constructed inside shipping containers, Bannok Thai Coffee Roasters is a bean roasting and coffee production unit, turned slightly madcap hangout. Here you can experience the coffee production process, and chill out amongst the sprawling mish-mash of half-curated urban zones; round the bath-tub tables, beside the pop-up swimming pool installation or enjoy film nights on the artificially turfed outdoor cinema. Anything goes and it’s a bit shabby-shabby, filled with random reclaimed features, but it has a cool, popular feel of potential.
The nearby village of Pong Noi is well known for attracting both visiting and local creative types. It has a quaint, yet contemporary design & craft village called Baan Kang Wat. Here we take our clients to observe or partake in workshops in a wide range of artisan skills including woodworking, ceramics and pottery, painting or produce-growing. To top it off, the beautifully manicured community area with all of its innovative art installations has a central modern amphitheatre for a wide range of performances. An organic market is one of our favourite Sunday morning stroll-abouts.
Another unusual designer space in nearby Wongnai, is No 39 Café. We all find it pleasant for coffees, lunches, relaxed recovery working, and staged performances.
A wide range of little indie food stalls line the streets in our area for ‘on-the-run’ local tasters.
And if that wasn’t enough, we have the Chiang Mai Night Safari on our doorstep, which opens in perfect time for dinner with a difference.
Just to show off, we are no more than a few minutes from Mexican, Japanese, American, French, British, Asian-Fusion, Korean, Italian, Chinese or Thai dining, all of whom know us well!
Our push bikes can be borrowed from The Village and provide you wider access into the hills and waterfalls for picnics, local food from Thai stalls or giant indoor food halls – you may even be invited into a home for an authentic family supper.
Living Experiential Recovery through eating out helps us to appreciate the finer details of what others do for us.
