Ganjana

HighThailand recently visited the Ganjana shop to meet with the shop’s famous founders, Thailand’s top cannabis growers. Our intent was to interview Thailand’s pioneer growers and capture their stories in an article. It quickly became clear that each grower’s history, story, contributions to Thailand, and buds deserve to be spotlighted alone in an independent article. We are currently working on those individual articles. However, before we discuss those growers’ personal stories, it is first important to understand their common home, Ganjana.

Ganjana is a small one room shop in Lad Prao next door to Stoner Cats with its vintage motorcycles parked outside. The shop has the relaxed familiar feel of a club house or (mature) fraternity rather than a dispensary. A set of comfortable leather couches and chairs take up most of the space of the shop with a wooden table separating the couches from the chairs. Local art, most notably T-Rex’s terrifically gory and Canis Major’s intellectually trippy emblems, express the personality of the shop and its founding members. Board games and toys sit neatly on a shelf waiting patiently to be played. A marble counter at the far end of the shop showcases a collection of the best cannabis available in Thailand. Cannabis from members Olive Farm, Power Puff, Underground Grower, Canis Major and T-Rex sit together in their master grower’s signature jars of glass and porcelain. Affiliated growers, 66Zombies and Shovel, also have their wares on display.

The cannabis itself is unreal—jars upon jars of the best flowers in Thailand, curated by the growers themselves and displayed with the pride of a mother showing off a new born baby. Giant, potent, pungent, dazzling, beautiful buds. There is no second best here. This is not ok or pretty good or acceptable weed. This is the best collection and highest quality display of cannabis in Thailand. The type of weed you break out for special guests, your most loved ones, esteemed dignitaries and the most elevated of religious leaders. This is not the commercial weed of shopping mall brands—this weed belongs in a museum. We will dedicate more pages in future Masters Collection articles to each of the master’s strains.

Most of the members of Ganjana have known each other for 5-6 years, going back to pre-legalization growing days. In those pre-legalization days it was hard for growers to find and learn from each other. However, through time and careful detective work, the growers found one another and launched the “Ganjana Cup”. The Ganjana Cup was a contest not about winning, but about sharing, learning, and trying each other’s flowers. Canis, T-Rex and others would grow and check each other’s goods out, while the already established grower Underground Grower helped judge. This friendly contest became a community of growers, a community of education with each grower learning, developing, and honing their skills.

Post legalization the former Ganjana Cup contestant/comrades put together the Ganjana shop which acts as both a dispensary for the public but still a club house of sorts for the original contestants to hang out, talk about weed, talk about growing and compare notes and products. Ganjana also acts as a school house of sorts for new and up and coming serious growers. While we were visiting the shop, two additional growers who received clones from the members arrived to proudly show the fruits of their labor—beautifully harvested and cured cannabis. Olive, Canis, T-Rex and Power Puff all inspected the flowers, smelling and nodding in approval.

Ganjana is open throughout the week, but it’s founding members regularly socialize there in the evenings—in  particular weekend evenings. When we came to the shop on a mid January Saturday, we found T-Rex and Olive sitting around their table playing Magic the Gathering. Just chilling, chit chatting and having fun, taking breaks here and there to take a toke outside the store. Power Puff was hanging out behind the counter speaking with some customers, growers themselves from Australia, who came to pay homage to Ganjana.

Ganjana is the physical manifestation of several personalities. It is first and foremost a place for growers to meet, to hang out and chat. Its purpose as a business is secondary. However, the customer experience is only enhanced because of this. The growers are so focused on the quality of their grows that they insist that customers first taste the flowers before buying. Smelling, touching, tasting are key and important to the experience for the growers—and each experience is subjective to the customer. The experience must be perfect, ideal and the best they can get. The Ganjana members are not out to sell their flowers, their intent is to share their art.

From a personal point of view, and I believe I speak for my partners on this as well, the Ganjana experience was like no other. We were presented incredible Hollywood type flowers directly from the growers themselves. Hung out, chatted, smoked, joked and laughed with the growers, staff, other guests and the visiting up and coming growers. Despite being surrounded by some of the most celebrated growers in Thailand, there were no egos, no chest thumping. The growers are proud but humble, quiet—letting the cannabis speak for itself, funny, human and charming. These are friends—warm—open to the rest of the cannabis world. These are adults who have been through so much (more details to come) and now can relax and enjoy what they have built.

We highly recommend that anyone, anywhere in the world, who cares about cannabis visits Ganjana. In fact as I write this article, my partners and I are excitedly chatting about our next visit. Recently there has been much discussion about imports continuing to come in, with smugglers becoming more sophisticated by “washing” imported flowers at dubious farms and then passing off such imports as “Thai grown”. These products cannot be compared to the best of what Thailand has to offer, which can be found at Ganjana. The dedicated and educated toker who has a chance to see, smell, and touch the cannabis at Ganjana and meet the incredible people behind it, will know: Thai cannabis and cannabis culture are here to stay. The culture and flower will not take a back seat, they are poised to spread through the world.