Fitness Bangkok Style
Even though I’m on holiday I do need to look after the figure. After all no one likes a fat punk … especially me since I’ve worked so hard to slim down this year. So my first morning in BKK I had a session at the hotel gym.
The Bliston’s gym is quite ok. It has 3 treadmills and 3 bikes plus a limited range of weight machines and dumbells. I hopped on the treadmill and cranked her up to my usual pace (11k ph) and had to crank my music up loud to mask the noises coming from the tready. The machine looked modern enough so I wasn’t sure what the problem was. That was until one of the locals got on one a bit later in my workout.
Fitness BKK style is a tad different to what we get up to in the gym. The lady that got on the treadmill after me wore a pair of masseur sandals, white blouse, and grey track pants. Not the ideal attire for pounding the treadmill. Needless to say the treadmill didn’t get a workout which is why it didn’t protest, it didn’t get past 6kph but it did stretch a bit when she increased the incline to it’s maximum.
Later in that same workout I saw a Thai girl bedecked in Nike gear (good start) wearing jelly sandals (bad finish). She did one rep on the chest press and they slumped over and played with her mobile … I guess she had to update her Facebook friends on that exhausting chest press.
Before leaving for BKK I read online that Lumpini Park is the place to go running. Lumpini is not that far from the Bliston so we decided to do some recon on day one to check it out. We got there early by Thai standards which was around 8:30ish and saw people doing Tai Chi. We even saw an elderly dance troupe (or maybe it was Thai Zumba) rehearsing their Gangnam Style routine. That was the sweetest thing ever! I really had to hold myself back from joining them.
Lumpini didn’t disappoint. It was a tranquil green oasis away from the hive of commercial activity which is Bangkok. On our lap around the park we happened upon the Lumpini Jungle Gym or the cemetery of old gym equipment. The place really needs to be seen to believed.
The gym is nestled in a shady part of the park under ancient giant frangipani trees and covered by a patchwork of tarpaulins. It is a virtual museum of old gym equipment and from we could understand it was free for anyone to use. Despite its obvious OH&S issues the gym was a marvel of community sprit and recycling, seemingly at odds with the Thai need for everything to be bright and shiny.
So my experience with Thai fitness is this; whether you’re walking slowly uphill on the treadmill, working up a sweat in the jungle gym, getting your Gangnam Style on, or simply doing the shopping centre shuffle you get your exercise in when and where you can but you always do it in style….BKK style!
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