Rocket Yoga. Get There Faster.

Back in my year in India when I was looking for enlightenment one of the toughest part was the goddamn meditation. To sit quiet for a few minutes that’s OK. But for hours! They are saints back there in India, and I’m not. But there are ways to find inner peace, and one of those more active methods is blooming in Thailand: yoga, or more specifically: Rocket Yoga. Get to the fitness nirvana faster.

Larry Schultz? Says something? Argh you ignorant soul. This is Larry Schultz. And Larry Schultz recently brought his Rocket Yoga teachings to Bangkok for the first time. And guess where. At Bangkok’s top yoga studio Absolute Yoga Bangkok. An unintentional namesake of this site. There they find peace of mind by body activity, here by mental work …

Anyway, Larry Schultz has been teaching yoga for 30 years and has influenced yoga practitioners around the world. Bangkokian fellow yoga practitioners felt indeed lucky to have him here. In case you missed this express way to salvation, here’s a short cut. You might wanna give Rocket Yoga or any yoga for that a try. Yoga is booming here. Khun Ben and Khun David, participants at the workshop, sent us this little report with photos by Patrick Thorpe:

Sphere: Related Content

February 22, 2010 | Filed Under Culture & Arts, Health, Body & Mind, Sports & Fun | 1 Comment

Urinators Anonymous

They’re one of my favorite spots in Thailand, one of the kingdom’s most romantic places, the hot springs of Hin Dat an hour’s drive northwest of Kanchanaburi. To cut a long story short: The public bath with beautiful hot spring water pools are open from 6 am to 10 pm each day. Enjoy a relaxing bath in the hot thermal water with this distinct odor of rotten eggs, i.e. sulphur. After that enjoy a bath in the refreshing little stream bubbling just alongside. And again, and again. Pure idyll. And maybe a massage.

The brook brabbles, the birds are singing and tweeting … Best to be enjoyed close to the opening and closing hours when there are hardly any visitors. So I went there on a Friday night – and guess what, some eager locals were washing out the pools. All the thermal water got pumped off into the stream and the locals were scrubbing the walls. They do that every Friday night, a worker told me. So Saturday morning I tried to be the first in those pools freshly refilled with healthy thermae spring water.

But what a surprise, eager local residents were enjoying the fresh water already! That early! And I thought I’d be alone … It’s still dark, not a ray of sunlight. Local residents relax in the quiet peace of the hot mineral-rich spring water of Hin Dat before the tourists arrive. Only one guy was talking, and I heard him say – obviously not the least bothered that me farang could understand: “Yesterday afternoon, there were so many farangs in the water. God was that water dirty. Now it’s clean again.”

Sphere: Related Content

January 24, 2010 | Filed Under Being Farang, Culture Shock, Sports & Fun, The Thai Mind, Travel & Tourism | 9 Comments

Recently, In The Wild

As one single panda cub keeps on taking the breath away from a whole nation with breaking news such as when she opened her left and when her right eye, the kingdom’s official animal, the elephant, falls into ever deeper oblivion. The panda earns the Chiang Mai zoo millions. Elephants cost millions.

The little panda is so cute. Hence elephants have become a menace. They roam Bangkok’s streets begging for food and recently, while driving to a temple near the Burmese border, a 2 1/2 hours drive away from Bangkok, on the beautiful highway 3219 from Hua Hin to the Pala-U waterfalls, we ran into a wild elephant.

There he was, at around tenish in the morning, breaking out of the jungle thicket and slowly marching along the road. A pick-up driver tried to tell me: slow down. But there he came, the elephant, kind of charging, speeding up in exactly our direction. What to do?

Sphere: Related Content

July 12, 2009 | Filed Under Nature, Sports & Fun | 3 Comments

Tidbits: Read & Write Thai + Thailand Sports

The probably best Thai language course out there Learn Thai Podcast LTP just added a Reading & Writing Course. Thumbs up to Jay and his team. Another innovative add-on.

LTP’s approach based on repetitive memorization works. It’s money most well spent if you finally want to master that beauty of a language after years of not understanding your hosts.

And for the sport fanatics out here looking for new kicks and like-minded people: the Sports Network went online, “connecting sporting people throughout Thailand.”

Sphere: Related Content

April 23, 2009 | Filed Under Being Farang, Culture & Arts, Sports & Fun, Tidbits | Leave a Comment

Golfer Prayad’s From Nowhere To Riches

I’m not a golfer. Got a single club, a no. 7, somewhere. What can you do with a single club. I’m a kiter. But even as a anti-golfer, Thailand has a great PGA event with a promising Thai twist coming up.

Hua Hin’s Black Mountain Golf Club from March 26th to 29th hosts the Black Mountain Masters 2009. Tiger Wood’s couldn’t make it, but they got Jesper Parnevik – and Prayad Marksaeng.

That’s right, the boy from Hua Hin from humble roots who recently caused a stir until that triple bogey on the final hole at Doral. Now all Thai eyes rest on Prayad who “grew up in poverty,” an AP story tells us.

Sphere: Related Content

March 25, 2009 | Filed Under Sports & Fun, TTT - Top Thai Things | 2 Comments

What Brought You To Bangkok? + World’s Soccer Freestyle Champ In Town

The tidbit first, work – a poll on “You & Thailand” – further below: John Farnworth is in town, the world’s freestyle soccer champion and current holder of the Guinness World Record for a trick called the “Around the World.” Got a glimpse of John the other day. A completely jolly, unpretentious guy.

And he did his first kick at the age of twelve … Now 22, he’ll make you smile at Ronaldo and Ronaldinho. Brought to Bangkok by Bangkok’s probably leading soccer school Brazilian Soccer, Farnworth will be performing at the opening of Crystal Football Club and at numerous schools.

If interested drop an email and I send you the schedule. Farnworth was actually a graduate of Brazilian Soccer Schools (BSS). And you, still wondering about job and career? There’s actually some money in freestyle football.

Sphere: Related Content

November 4, 2008 | Filed Under Sports & Fun, Survey / Poll | 2 Comments

Recent Comments
- Hobby: Thanks for publishing this, and FWIW, I agree with Federico. Dan, since your site... (Alarmism: An Open Letter - 2)
- D.: Hi Dan, I just read the letter from Federico. It’s good you published it. Although I... (Alarmism: An Open Letter - 2)
- stoic: What if Isaan is not worse off today than under Thaksin? This is what’s it all about, and... (Red Letdown - 7)
- Robin: Qualtrough wrote: “… I never liked Thaksin, but I can certainly see why the red... (Red Letdown - 7)
- Qualtrough: One of the things that irks the supporters of the red shirts the most, and who can blame... (Red Letdown - 7)
- stoic: Even if a million red shirts show up on Sunday, Bangkok they lost big time on Friday. No Isaan... (Red Letdown - 7)
- Catherine: From what I was told, the red shirts didn’t even start leaving their areas until Friday... (Red Letdown - 7)
- garett: This claim of CIA prisons has already been proven false, pinhead. Prove it... (Tidbits: CIA, King Power, Shots - 3)
- Jaded: The panic reactions to the prospect of red shirted poorer people demonstrating in Bangkok do seem... (Red Letdown - 7)