Mae Mon Farm & Café

Mae Mon Farm & Café is a working mulberry orchard and roadside café near the Ban San Kamphaeng reservoir in Khao Yai’s Wang Nam Khiao district — “mon” is Thai for mulberry, and that’s the crop the whole place is built around, alongside a smaller vanilla garden. Entry is free; open daily 08:00-17:00.

Experience

Rows of mulberry bushes, GAP-certified for food safety, run down toward the reservoir, with a vanilla garden threaded alongside them for visitors who want to walk before eating. In season, mulberries are sold for picking by the box — roughly 50 THB each rather than priced by weight — and the fruit that isn’t picked fresh goes into the café’s own product line: mulberry juice, dried mulberry tea leaves, and preserved mulberry (look for ลูกหม่อนกวน on the shelf, a sticky reduced-mulberry snack sold across the north and northeast wherever the fruit grows).

The café itself is open-air, built for the cooler air Wang Nam Khiao is known for relative to the rest of Nakhon Ratchasima province. The homemade ice cream is the main draw — mulberry, vanilla, mocha chocolate chip, and guava are the regulars, 25-50 THB a scoop — alongside an affogato made with the house vanilla ice cream and a short menu of Thai rice dishes for anyone staying for a proper meal rather than a snack stop.

Atmosphere & Timing

Insider Tip: Go for the ice cream, not the garden alone — the mulberry and mocha chocolate chip scoops get the strongest word of mouth, and pairing one with the affogato is the local move if you want both coffee and dessert in one order.

Watch out: Mulberry season is seasonal, not year-round — call ahead if picking your own fruit is the point of the visit, since outside the fruiting window there’s little to pick even though the café and ice cream counter stay open.

Practical

The farm sits in Wang Mi subdistrict, reached by road from either Pak Chong or Wang Nam Khiao town — there’s no public transport link, so a car or motorbike is necessary. It works well as a short stop on a drive through Wang Nam Khiao’s cluster of farm cafés rather than a destination on its own.