Sandot Sukkaew is a Lua (Lawa) hilltribe member, permaculture educator, natural building master, and the founder of Sahainan Permaculture Organic Farm in Nan Province, Northern Thailand. Born in Pai, Mae Hong Son Province, his family’s history is shaped by the 1967 political conflicts that displaced Lua communities across Thailand’s northern mountains. The tribe eventually received government land grants, and Sandot grew up immersed in traditional farming practices that, unbeknownst to him at the time, closely mirrored modern permaculture principles.

Seeking to escape rural poverty, Sandot trained as an electrical engineer and spent six years working in Saudi Arabia. The experience, while financially successful, reinforced his conviction that a simple life connected to the land held deeper value than money. Returning to Pai, he invested his savings in a monoculture mango plantation of 1,200 trees. The result was a hard lesson: monoculture made him “a prisoner of the market,” unable to even grow his own food. A pivotal encounter with visitors from Pun Pun Organic Farm near Chiang Mai introduced him to Bill Mollison’s writings and the formal language of permaculture. He recognized these concepts immediately in his own ancestral practices.

This realization led Sandot to found Tacomepai, an organic permaculture farm near Pai that operated for roughly 20 years, becoming part of the WWOOF network and hosting hundreds of volunteers and multiple PDC courses with international co-instructors. When over-tourism transformed Pai from a quiet farming village into what he described as “a quasi-permanent Woodstock festival,” Sandot and his partner Shen relocated to remote Thung Chang in Nan Province, founding Sahainan in November 2014.

At Sahainan, Sandot has personally built over 50 natural structures using primarily a machete, bamboo, mud, and teak wood. He has conducted many permaculture courses, teaching food forest design, natural building, bamboo craftsmanship, wild food foraging, water conservation, biochar production, seed saving, and off-grid living systems. His reforestation work in surrounding areas has restored spring-fed waterways within two years, a feat that earned him recognition from local authorities, who bestowed the title “Ajarn” (teacher/professor).

Beyond Sahainan, Sandot serves as a permaculture consultant for external projects including Baan Doi children’s center in Chiang Rai (in partnership with BASEhabitat, University of Arts Linz, Austria) and North Star Café and Farmstay. His work has been featured in HuffPost’s “This New World” documentary series, ThaiPBS, the Bangkok Post, and Gavroche magazine. Volunteers consistently describe him as “the Mr. Miyagi of permaculture, who lives it more than he preaches it.” His philosophy is captured in his own words: “Every time after learning some techniques, I became more free from money.” He offers one scholarship per course to English-speaking Thai farmers, gardeners, or sustainability workers, reflecting his commitment to making permaculture education accessible.