A common thing I hear from people who have first come to Chiang Mai is that they eat healthier and get in more fruits and vegetables over here than their home.

While there are certainly TONS of fresh fruits all year round and fruit shake stands on every corner, I find that I tend to eat more imbalanced meals here than when I’m visiting the U.S. Most typical Thai dishes – curries, stir-fries, soups and spicy Thai-stye salads – all have a mix of herbs, aromatics and vegetables…but they’re mixed in with meat, sugar, salt, fish sauce and quite a bit of soybean oil. There are few dishes that are built directly around veggies, and those that are are doused in sauces.

I can understand getting in more of a variety of herbs, vegetables and fruits in your diet here…but I eat more straight veggies at home and it’s hard for me to feel like eating stir-fried pork with basil and chilies on rice is “healthy”, even if it may feel lighter than a cheeseburger.

The fruit shake stands are often not as healthy as they seem. While there are a few stalls and smoothie places that emphasize they fact that they don’t add sugar syrup to their shakes, your standard market fruit shake stall does unless you specifically ask for them not to. In a town of hundreds of fresh fruit shake places, I will only get shakes at three or four spots.

That all said, there is a growing healthy eating movement here both within the expat and local Thai community, however drinking green juice or adding chia seeds and bee pollen to your smoothie bowl is still not super common.

Which is why when I’ve searched for a juice cleanse in Chiang Mai before I came up with nothing. There are a number of juice companies in Bangkok and a few even deliver to Chiang Mai, but the prices seemed high and if they’re being shipped up to Chiang Mai, they’re not as fresh as they should be.

Enter BOOST cold pressed juices in Chiang Mai. Yay!

Riya started BOOST in early 2016 after coming home from living overseas. She had done cleanses and drank more cold pressed juice when abroad but didn’t find many offerings back in Chiang Mai. She and her boyfriend, Top, are now delivering different juices and set cleanses around town. (They’re crazy about freshness and quality even making the juices through the night for a fresh morning delivery.)

I’ve never done a cleanse but knew my body needed a reset and that I wanted to just have someone tell me what to do so reached out to Riya. Initially I wanted to do a 6-day cleanse but she talked me down to starting with a 3-day cleanse of eight 300ml bottles a day…which was the way to go. By the end of the three days I wanted some solid food but also felt like I had reset my body with a flush of vitamins.

To be honest, I’m not a big juice or smoothie person. (I also don’t really like coconut water…it’s incredible they let me stay in Thailand!) I really enjoyed the BOOST juice, however, My favorite combos were “Golden Spice” with pineapple, lemon and ginger, and “Sweet ‘n Simple” with celery, Granny Smith Apple, lime and cucumber.

I appreciated that all of BOOST’s juices have a range of ingredients and flavors packed into them, and are very easy to drink. Even the green ones loaded with kale, spinach, watercress, celery and parsley don’t taste like you’re drinking grass clippings. Riya and Top have developed the blends to have a mix of nutrients and so that even people who don’t like to eat veggies can down the juice. I like vegetables but have gotten used to forcing myself to chug green juices without thinking about it because the taste is rough. You can actually sip and enjoy BOOST’s green concoctions.

While I probably won’t do a full-on cleanse too often, I do plan to keep my fridge stocked with a few big bottles to drink throughout the week.

BOOST Juice Cleanse in Chiang Mai

Prices are 85 baht for a small (300ml) bottle and 160 baht for a large (500ml) bottle. Obviously the costs are more expensive than most standard Thai food, but the quality of fruits and vegetables plus the amount of work that goes into producing the juices is also surprisingly high – they run some of their blends through the juicer twice to reduce any frothiness.

The 3-day kit that I did costs 1,890 baht and all orders over 1,000 baht receive free delivery.

Other cleanses include:

6-Day Juice Cleanse  

• 6-day mini bottles (48 X 300ml bottles) – 3,690 baht
• 6-day full dose (36 X 500 ml bottles) – 5,240 baht

(They’ll make two deliveries.)

Note: BOOST generously offered me my first cleanse complimentary…and they’ll definitely have my business in the future!