Most cannabis dispensaries in Thailand are not what they appear. Behind the Thai face on the storefront, the money usually comes from somewhere else — a foreign investor, a Bangkok holding company, a brand that bought a license and rented a name. Riverside Dispensary is not one of those.
I am Ploypailin Cunningham. I own this business. All of it. Every plant, every jar, every counter. My husband, Ben, supports me, but the business is mine, and the responsibility for what comes out of our cure room rests with me alone.
Where I come from
I grew up in a village in Surin, in the rice country of northeast Thailand. My family farmed. We had enough but never extra. My grandparents knew every plant on the land — what to pick, what to leave, when to plant, when to wait. I did not realize as a child how unusual that knowledge was. I just thought everyone's grandmother could read soil.
"You cannot fake a good plant. They tell on you."
That is what my grandfather used to say about rice. It turns out to be true about cannabis too.
How Riverside started
When Thailand legalized cannabis in 2022, my husband and I were living in Texas. We watched the news from a long way away and saw an opportunity that almost no one in our American circle would have understood: not the chance to make money fast, but the chance to build something honest in an industry that, in most countries, is anything but.
We moved back. I went to Chiang Mai because the climate is right for cannabis and because the city already had a quiet, cosmopolitan culture that was open to it. I started small. One shop. One small grow. Friends as the first budtenders.
What I would not do — and what some of my early competitors did do — was rush the genetics, skip the cure, sell early-pulled flower with foreign labels glued on, or hire budtenders who did not know what they were selling. I was raised to grow things properly, and I refused to sell what I would not be proud to give my grandmother.
Where the name comes from
The name is simpler than people guess. Our first shop, in 2023, was in the Riverside condo in Chiang Mai. The condo eventually asked us to close — we smelled a little too good — and in 2024 we opened on Tha Phae Road. The name came with us.
Consistency is a personal thing. Mine.
The team
Almost everyone who works at Riverside is a woman. Most are from villages — some from Akha hill-tribe families, some from Isan like me, some from northern Thai farming families. The cultivation team you see in indigo jackets are not models. They are the women who actually grow and trim our plants. They wear the traditional dress because they wear it at home.
Every budtender at the counter has been personally trained by me. I do not run a training manual. I sit with each new hire for a full week and we talk through every strain, every product — what it does, who it's for, what to say when a customer asks the wrong question. By the time someone is on the counter alone, they could open their own shop. Some of them eventually will.
What we believe
Cannabis is not a tourist gimmick. It is medicine for some people, recreation for others, and a serious agricultural product worth treating with respect. My job is to make sure that every person who walks into Riverside Dispensary — whether they are a Chiang Mai local, a long-term expat, or a tourist on their first trip — leaves having gotten exactly what they paid for, exactly as described, with no surprises.
If you are reading this, you are most of the way there already. Come find us. The conversation is free always.
— Ploypailin Cunningham
Owner · Cultivator · Founder