Bangkok Yoga Tour

You'll find stunning scenery, bargain gourmet food, and serene yoga havens in the city with something for everyone.

By Kristin Barendsen

Bangkok, Thailand's capital, is a city teeming with 9 million people—most of whom seem to be bustling through the frenetic streets, where stunning Buddhist temples sit beside megaplex massage parlors. The chaos can be overwhelming, but Bangkok's challenges make its rewards—meditating at street shrines or enjoying a 50-cent papaya salad—that much more potent. And both Thais and Western expatriates have found that yoga is a great retreat from a hot and crowded city.

Though it's not as popular as the ubiquitous aerobics and tai chi classes, yoga has taken off in recent years. Western teachers lead classes in specific styles, like Iyengar and vinyasa, and draw a mixed crowd, while the Thais tend to teach a gentler style and attract mainly their countrymen (although that may be because of the language barrier).

Yoga Elements is a zone of tranquility on Patpong, one of Bangkok's notorious girl-bar streets. Inside, Indian music and incense make it easy to forget about the outside world. Director Adrian Cox, a New Yorker, teaches dynamic vinyasa classes with careful attention to alignment. Cox describes his studio, where six teachers lead 26 classes a week, as a "community of professional instructors and students who have fallen in love with the practice of yoga." Yoga Elements offers some of the city's only vinyasa and Ashtanga classes, as well as prenatal yoga and Yogalates.

The only Bikram studio in Thailand is Bikram Yoga Bangkok, which opened in 2002. It's surprisingly popular, given that Bangkok residents normally will do anything to escape the heat. It's a large studio that has spacious locker rooms and showers; students can pick from 24 classes a week.

The students, mostly Thai, are able to follow the Bikram-style English patter and directions perfectly. "Students here are more attentive than any I've encountered," says American teacher John Anderson.

Los Angeles native Justin Herold taught yoga in Bangkok for six years before opening the city's only accredited Iyengar center, Iyengar Yoga Studio, in 1999. Students from around the world fill the 15 classes he teaches there each week. His bright studio is well equipped with props, including wall ropes and an innovative Shoulderstand pad that he engineered, drawing on his background as a builder. Herold, who has studied several times with B.K.S. Iyengar in Pune, India, is currently training local teachers to offer classes in the Thai language.

One of Bangkok's yoga legends is Chomchuen Sidthivech, nicknamed Kru ("teacher") Noo ("mouse"), who has taught out of her Ekamai district home for nearly 20 years. Kru Noo's first teacher was her father-in-law, with whom she studied Sivananda Yoga. Later, she went on to study with Swami Vishnu-devananda in Rishikesh, India.

The classes offered twice a day at Baan Noo (House of Noo) are like informal workshops. Some 45 to 100 students practice individually in the house and garden, while Kru Noo makes the rounds to prescribe asanas and check her students' progress. "Some people learn faster than others," she says. It's an open, novel style that seems to work, especially for those with a background in Sivananda.

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