Profile information
Host rating
80 %
Last replied
19 Mar 2025
Reply rate
66.7 %
Usually responds within 10 days
Feedback
25
Email verified
Badges (4)
Details
Description
Our available dates:
December: 10th - 24th
January: Full
February: Full
March: n/a for booking yet
This is Jern (39) and my wife, Kai (37). We are farmers who started to practice self-sufficient lifestyle since a year ago. We are staying in a small village in Penang. We have a land of 2 acres and we are using around a third of it for our farm. Furthermore, we are still operating one online rental listing which is located at Penang Island. So we will need your help for the cleaning task as well.
You are welcomed to stay with us if you like to experience farm life together with us.
**Only serious volunteers
Please read the rest of our profile and do let us know if you have any other questions.
Types of help and learning opportunities
Art Projects
Gardening
DIY and building projects
Animal Care
Farmstay help
Help around the house
Hospitality/Tourism
General Maintenance
Help with Computers/ Internet
UN sustainability goals this host is trying to achieve
Cultural exchange and learning opportunities
We wish to make friends with people all around the world because we love to. We used to be rental hosts and we have met many guests and eventually we become friends. We learned a lot from them via cultural exchange through conversation. Malaysia is a unique country with different ethnicity, culture and religion. You can stay with different hosts to understand more about our country.
Help
GENERAL
- Farm tasks (planting, harvesting, fruit picking, weeding, fertilizing, pruning, composting...)
- Bed making, house cleaning (When we go back Penang island )
CURRENT PROJECTS:
1. Eco pond building (Digging with hoe. Hard task)
2. Fruit trees pruning
UPCOMING PROJECTS:
1. Building trellis for passion fruit
2. Mural for our exterior wall (Anyone who good with art is welcomed)
We are willing to share you everything we know about farming and we wish to learn anything about farming from you as well.
**We prefer volunteers who can help independently as well as good self discipline.
Languages
Languages spoken
English: Fluent
Malay: Fluent
Chinese (Mandarin): FluentThis host offers a language exchange
This host has indicated that they are interested in sharing their own language or learning a new language.
You can contact them directly for more information.
Accommodation
You will be staying in a private room in our house. If we have guests at home, then you need to sleep in the living room with mattress on the floor. Shared bathroom and toilet. Towels are not provided.
We will cook three meals a day most of the time. But sometimes we will just order a takeaway.
We do not allow our volunteers to use the AC in the room. Please do let us know if you really need to use it. We will charge a fee of RM7/day.
What else ...
OUR LOCATION:
Penang is one of the 13 states in Malaysia. There is Penang Island as well as the Penang Mainland (on the Peninsular of Malaysia). We are on the Mainland. There will be less attractions at this part of Penang. Our location is away from city.
If you would like to explore our state capital, i.e. Georgetown, it is located on the Island. We will go back to my parents house once a week or once in every 2 weeks, which is located at Penang island. You can follow us and we will drop you at Georgetown for sight seeing during your off days. If we are unable to drop you at Georgetown, you can go there by yourself using Grabcar. You can download the apps and it is very useful in Malaysia. There is another option, which you can take the train from our nearest train station to Butterworth, then take the ferry to the Penang island.
FYI, it takes around an hour to go to Penang Island from our place.
TYPE OF FARMING:
We are practicing natural farming. We are still new to this and If you have the knowledge of natural farming, organic farming and permaculture, we are happy to learn from you. For those who has these knowledges will have the priorities.
We just took a course of Syntropic Agroforestry on May 2023. Will implement it in our farm from time to time, stage by stage.
p/s: We are fairly new to farming. We wish to learn from others as well as to share what we know to others.
VOLUNTEERS:
We prefer solo traveler as well as couple. Not more than 2 people at a time.
We are looking for volunteers who have great interest in planting. We will spend 2 weeks living together, we found that it is important to have a common topic to chat with. Malaysia climate is hot (mostly above 32degreeC), so what we plant here might be different from your country which has 4 seasons. We are happy to share info/knowledge on what we can plant here.
We are willing to share what we learn from them if you are interested.
LENGTH OF STAY:
We required a minimum of 2 weeks stay. Extension of stay can be done if both parties are happy with it. And vice versa.
HELPING HOUR:
7.00am to 9.00am
4.30pm to 7.30pm
We will try to avoid to work under the hot sun. So that's our normal working hour. But we can adjust it accordingly when you are here and see what is the best for everyone.
DAILY SCHEDULE:
Below are our daily schedule:
Beginning of the day
7.00am - Help
9.00am - Breakfast
12.00pm - Lunch
5.00pm - Help
8.00pm - Dinner
End of the day
ENVIRONMENT:
As you know, we only have one season here, i.e. summer. So it is hot, but normally we will not work under the hot sun. One more thing is the mosquitoes. If you cannot bear with mosquito bites, then please don't come.
Please prepare mosquito repellent and mosquito bites balm if you decided to come. Long pants and long sleeved shirts help too.
FOOD:
We cook our food daily but we will order takeaway as well when we are lazy. The ingredients of the food we cook are mainly from our farm (mainly vegetables). But we will buy meat and some veggies that we couldn't grow here from the market too. Our diet will have more vegetables than meat/seafood. So we are not vegetarian, not vegan, not lactose or gluten intolerance. Therefore, we might have difficulties in food preparation for someone who has special diet. It is good if you can eat whatever we cook. Simple food, you eat what we cook. 3 meals a day. No leftover food for every meals, we finish all food for each meal, and we mainly eat rice for lunch and dinner.
Following are example of what we eat:
Breakfast - bread with jam/peanut butter/butter, or oat porridge with nuts, raisins, seeds, soymilk/milk
Lunch & Dinner - Rice with at least 1 vegetable and 1 protein (egg/tofu/chicken/pork/fish)
We eat fruits when we have harvest from the farm.
If you want to have extra snacks, it is on your expense.
We are not a big fan of "organic" products, so we eat non-organic food as well. Please don't tell us that you only eat organic oat instead of normal oat, sourdough bread instead of white bread, brown rice instead of white rice. We eat junk food sometimes too.
If you are interested to stay with us, please write to us. You may include the answers for the following questions that we wish to know.
1. When do you plan to come over to our place and when do you plan to leave? (Check-in & Check-out Dates)
2. How do you plan to come to Penang? (Flight, bus, train ...)
p/s: There is a train station nearby our place and it is only 10mins drive from our house. We can pick you up there. (Tasek Gelugor Station)
3. Do you have any special diet? (Vegan, Vegetarian...)
- Please do specify clearly what you don't eat (please refer to FOOD section on what we eat), or any food allergy.
4. What is your expectation for your stay at our place?
We will share our WhatsApp number at later stage for easier communication.
Wish to hear from you. Cheers!
A little more information
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
Can host families
Can host digital nomads
Wifi is available at our premise. The speed of the wifi is 30Mbps. Should be enough for normal streaming and work.
Space for parking camper vans
The space is big enough for several campervans.
How many Workawayers can stay?
Two
Feedback (11)
We really… read more
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Accuracy of profile:
(4.8)
Cultural exchange:
(4.8)
Communication:
(4.6)
We really… read more
You can't help but want to do more on their farm as you see how hard they work themselves. It's… read more
Jern and Kai generously shared their knowledge with me and patiently answered all my questions. What struck me… read more
I learned a lot about syntropic farming, agroforestry (it may not be proper to define… read more
They are helpful and willing to learn new things. They helped us to prepare the raised beds for the crops, built passion fruit trellis from bamboo, weeding, fertilizing, sowed vegetable seeds, harvested pak choy, pruned fruit tree, planted… read more
