Kayiwa · · 5 min read
You hold on, you press, and milk comes out. That is the whole trick, and I still could not believe it was working.
We drove up from Bangkok to Farm Chokchai in Khao Yai for one thing I had never done in my life, and I ended up staying for sunflowers, a Wild West town on the fourth floor of a museum, and the best milk I have had in Thailand.
What it costs to get in
When I visited, entry was 150 THB for adults and 70 THB for children. That gets you through the gate. Almost everything hands-on after that is priced separately, and none of it is expensive:
- Milking a cow — 50 THB per person
- Pony ride — 50 THB
- Horse cart ride — 100 THB
- Shooting game — 40 THB a go, 80 THB for the longer one
- UTV and golf cart rental, and animal feed for the chickens, ducks, rabbits, cows, sheep and pigs
So a family can get in and do the headline activity for not much money at all. Budget for the extras rather than the ticket.
The sunflowers nobody warned me about
I came for cows. What stopped me first was a field of sunflowers off to the left of the entrance, stretching further than I expected a dairy farm to bother with. You could spend the whole day photographing that field alone.
Do not walk straight past it to get to the animals. That is the mistake.
Past it there are carts running tours of the farm, a cowboy station, horses, and mini horses so small and so friendly that I spent an embarrassing amount of time asking one of them its name. There is also a scarecrow, which I had not seen in years.
Milking a cow, for 50 baht
You buy a milking ticket, wash your hands — there is a sign about it, and a mat at the entrance to the animal area to disinfect your shoes, because one infection on a farm this size is everybody’s problem — and then you sit down on a stool next to an animal several times your weight.
The technique is simpler than it looks and harder than it sounds. You hold, you press. The first time it actually worked I shouted. That is in the video and I am not editing it out.
One thing worth knowing before you get your hopes up: you cannot drink what you milk. I asked. Raw milk stays on the farm, and you cannot take it home either. Only pasteurised milk gets sold to visitors.
The milk, though
This was my actual reason for coming. Milk from a supermarket has never tasted like milk did back home, and I wanted to know whether that was memory or processing.
They sell it near the entrance, by Legend Dairy of Pak Chong, 50 THB, zero lactose. It smelled right before I even drank it. It is the closest thing to home milk I have found in Thailand, and better than anything I have bought in a store here.
Then, on the way out, the fresh milk ice cream. Put that on your list. I nearly went back for a second one.
The museum is the surprise
I expected a room of photographs. It is four floors, and it gets stranger as you climb.
- A collection of old military vehicles and equipment outside, the kind built when things were made heavy on purpose
- A jungle floor that recreates dense Thai forest indoors, with trees, undergrowth and wildlife. It is convincing enough that walking into it feels like leaving the farm entirely
- An old timber train, showing how logs used to be moved
- On the fourth floor, a full Wild West cowboy town — wooden storefronts, a bank, mannequins frozen mid-street. Brilliant, and slightly unnerving if you are the only one moving in it
- The farm’s own history, including its founders. Chokchai himself was born in 1937
There is a souvenir shop at the end with farm-branded clothing and gifts, and a coffee shop just before the museum entrance.
Would I send you here?
Yes, and honestly what is in the video is only part of it. I did not get to the steak, which I was told is excellent, and I did not do half the activities. Give it most of a day rather than squeezing it into a Khao Yai national park itinerary.
Getting there from Bangkok
Farm Chokchai is out in Pak Chong, two to three hours from Bangkok, and public transport does not make it easy. We drove. If you would rather not drive, the simplest fix is to charter a car for the day and let somebody else deal with the road.
The one I would point you at is this Khao Yai private charter from Bangkok. You get a professional driver, and you can take it as a single day out or stretch it to two days one night or three days two nights if you want to do Khao Yai National Park properly while you are up there. When I linked it, the day option started at around $113 with free cancellation until 6pm the day before, but check the current price before you book.
That is an affiliate link. It costs you nothing extra, and it helps keep this site and the channel running.
The practical bit
- Where: Farm Chokchai, Pak Chong District, Nakhon Ratchasima (Khao Yai), about 2–3 hours from Bangkok
- Entry: 150 THB adults, 70 THB children when I visited
- Do not miss: the sunflower field, the 50 THB milk, the milk ice cream, the museum’s fourth floor
- Getting there: 2–3 hours from Bangkok — drive, or take a private charter (affiliate)
- Bring: a camera — once you are there you can park and walk, or rent a cart on site
- Video runtime: about 25 minutes
For where Khao Yai fits into a wider trip, see the Thailand travel guide. More films are on the videos page.