Chiang Mai: massages and restaurant by women prisoners

If you go to Chiang Mai during your trip in Thailand, you will definitely be hungry and want a massage at one time or another. The city does not lack of restaurants and massage parlors but there is a place where you can eat or have a massage while doing a good action : the Women Correctional Institution Training Center. A name that is certainly a little long and not the most glamorous but lovely place with a restaurant and a massage parlor whose employees are inmates of Chiang Mai Women Prison.

The concept

The goal of this place is to help the women prisoners to make a fresh start in life after their release from prison. Each morning 25 of them leave Chiang Mai Women prison to go to this nice little institute in a wooden house with a small courtyard under a tree that hosts the restaurant’s outdoor tables. The place is charming and if you did not see the 5 guards (unarmed but expert in close combat according to what the manager told me ;)), this massage parlor and restaurant all quite “classical”.

Inmates who work there before returning each night to Chiang Mai Women’s Prison have been scrupulously selected and trained. Only those with a remaining penalty of less than 3 ½ years can integrate the program. They have to follow 300 hours of massage classes in prison and then the 150 hours class to obtain the masseuse certificate mandatory to practice this profession in Thailand They also learn to cook and serve in a restaurant and to speak English and Chinese (80% customers are Chinese). With test and evaluation at every step.

Prisoners who have successfully completed all the stages work here for 2 to 3 months and receive 50% of the money they generate, which corresponds on average wage between 14,000 and 17,000 THB monthly, when basic wage in Thailand is THB 10,000. This money will help them start a new life after prison.All of them are sure, if they want, to have a job as a masseuse and to be hired in the network of parlors in Chiang Mai who work with the center.

The massage parlor

For 14 years that the place is open, the salon and its massages practiced by prisoners became an institution in Chiang Mai. Here you can only get body massage or foot massage (my favorite) for a rate of 200 THB per hour (the most common rate in Chiang Mai for one hour massage).

You can not make any appointment, you have to come and possibly queue and wait your turn sipping a drink at one of the tables of the restaurant for example. It is therefore advisable to come early in the morning. Around 10 am, there are already quite a lot of people…

I did not take pictures from the inside to respect the privacy of the prisoners working there, we are not allowed to take pictures on which we can see the faces of the masseuses.

The restaurant

The restaurant offers a nice setting in the courtyard when it does not rain but also has an air-conditioned room. You can only come for breakfast or lunch as the center closes at 4.30 pm so too early to have dinner here.

At the restoraut, however, there is almost all the time table available. The prices are very reasonable. For example, right now, Pad Thai cost 45 baht.

There is also a small souvenir shop selling handicraft made by other prisoners in the prison’s workshops.

Where is Chiang Mai Women Correctional Training Center?

This small resort with massage parlor and restaurant is very easy to find. It is located in the city not far from the iconic temples of the city, just behind the Three Kings Monument, one of Chiang Mai’s most famous squares.

Women Correctional Training Center massage & restaurant
Open from Monday to Friday from 8 am to 4:30 pm
and from Saturday to Sunday from 9 am to 4:30 pm
100 Rachawithi Road, Siriphum T, Muang Chiang Mai