The Prachaniwet Sports Centre, Bangkok

Today we found the Prachaniwet Sports Centre which is just about 500m away from our apartment. It has an Olympic sized swimming pool, a football field surrounded by a running track and a gym. It offers many sports sessions/classes such as children and adult’s swimming class, aerobic sessions and others which I’ll find out later after getting the brochure translated from Thai language to English. At the moment, what I can comprehend from the info provided by the officer on duty (in Thai Language) is that the membership fee is 40 baht per year. Members pay 15baht only for each swimming session. Using the gym and the aerobic session (at 1600hrs every day) are both complimentary. The complex is open from 1000 – 2100hours from Mon thru Sat, while on Sundays it opens from 1300-2100hrs. Since it’s not expensive at all (compared to joining the Sports City, which is about 2km away and costs 15000 baht a year for each person), we decided to have ourselves registered there and then. But then when given the registration card….we couldn’t complete it as all the particulars are in Thai. Well, I was smart enough to seek for permission to take the card back so that I could get the apartment manager to help us with the translation. Thanks to Pom. Yeah, that’s the name of our apartment manager, who’s the only one who can speak English well as she was educated in Australia. All the other staff: the receptionists, clerks, technicians, guards, cleaning ladies et al) can hardly speak phasa ungkrit (which is English language in Thai). Later in the evening we’ll go back to the complex to register and Keiron can go swimming while I’ll join the aerobic session.