Have Yoga Mat, Will Travel

A yoga mat seems to sneak through the carryon luggage allowance.  It’s okay to strap it to your backpack.  It’s better if your travelling companion has space to stash it in his.

On arrival at any new hotel, it is important to check for yoga space.  Balconies are a luxury.  Roof tops are lovely if warm and clean.  Hotel room floors usually involve a different kind of Vinyasa dance around the bed, chairs and side table, plus your other luggage.

Pre planning for yoga is as easy as Google Pie with Trip Advisor filling.  And so began my yoga tour of South East Asia.  Of course those of you who follow me on Instagram – sabineyoga – will have seen the pictures (some taken by the Boy, bless his little yogi heart) now here’s the story.

My pictorial yoga journey began in earnest when I left Australia for India, in October 2013.  Every town, temple and terrain was a yoga location.  No flying low under the radar when you’re striking a pose in the craziness of India, so Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were ripe for the asana-ing.

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First to Hanoi where the local version of yoga seemed to be an outdoor callisthenics dance, performed every evening by groups of lycra clad ladies around Lake Hoan Kiem.  Hilarious to watch and impossible to fathom who was leading or following, but they moved like synchronised swimmers, minus the smiles.  This yoga was serious business.

A more familiar form of yoga was advertised at the gym just across the road from our hotel.  After negotiating a thousand motor cycles and circumambulating the block the required three times, we located the entrance to the stairway, leading to the lift, that opened to a corridor, which lead to the studio.

As a self confessed yoga purist, I do look down my nose at gym yoga, but when in Hanoi ...  I arrived early, surprise surprise, and was directed pointedly to a spot in the pre arranged pattern of mats.  With no idea where the teacher would be, and the room filling up fast, I felt it prudent to sit tight.  At the exact starting time, a skinny young man, who looked more like an Olympic gymnast in dress and demeanour, walked in and started his routine.  The class participants, all ladies, followed in military fashion, as he zigzagged his way through a selection of asanas, up down, in out, and finished on the clock, before striding out.  Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite so clinical, but that’s how I remember it.  Still, trying to keeping to my mantra of ‘any yoga is good yoga’, I was just happy to be experiencing how yoga is practiced around the world.

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Out and about in Luang Prabang, I found a notice for Vinyasa at Utopia.  Everywhere was close in Luang Prabang and the Boy was sick and sorry, so I struck off into the dusk.  Of course it was a bit further than X marking the spot.  In fact, quite a bit further as I wound my way through lanes that became alleys, til I walked into a kind of slumber party for backpackers and tired hippies.  The yoga was on a deck suspended over the Mekong, and as the sun set and the breeze came up, the balance postures were challenging.  However, this was my kind of yoga and all was well with the world.

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My next yoga experience failed to launch, through no fault of my own.  In Vientiane I sourced and contacted the sole yoga studio.  I planned my travel with time for unforeseen incidents.  Funny though I made a linear calculation, and the tuk tuk driver used a quadratic equation, of ever decreasing circles and eventually deposited me further from my destination than I had started out.  Unable to make it now either on foot or by wheels, I was a very unhappy yogi that day.  Thank goodness for French pastries and coffee.

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In Siem Reap I left nothing to chance and planned my whole day around getting to Peace Cafe for yoga, and some ‘fresh vegetarian food to nurture body and soul’ ... and a pedicure at Kaya Spa.  Of course, when you are an Australian, travelling in Cambodia from India on your way to Nepal, you have to expect the yoga teacher to be Australian!  Antigone Garner (Tiggy)’s class was great, and on my second visit, she and I sat with the Boy for dinner after class, until the cafe was closing and they moved us on.  Turns out she’s a travelling yogi, running Cocktail Yoga Tours from Thailand into Laos, but she still has a natarajasana silhouetted against Sydney Harbour on her business card.

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The universe conspired to work in my favour in Phnom Penh – and then it didn’t.  Our hotel was just two blocks from NataRaj Yoga and my first class, with Carole from Switzerland teaching, was a back bending, bridge working, and headstand varying delight.  Then we partnered for and Instagram pose, before I sought coffee and WiFi.  Within hours my iPhone had been stolen and my world was in disarray.  Thank goodness for yoga, and the Boy.  The next day I braved the streets with his old iPhone 4 – the horror of it – and tentatively made my way back to NataRaj, this time for Toi’s class.  Oh my gosh!  That’s how you get into Eight Angle Pose.  Well mine still has a few too many angles and sometimes it doesn’t quite launch, but OM, that’s yoga.

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In Ho Chi Minh City staying at the Sofitel Saigon Plaza, what else would I want to do but go to yoga?  Yoga Living was walkable distance and even if it wasn’t, no more tuk tuks for me; the vehicle of choice for iPhone thieves on motorcycles.  Another circumambulation and a helpful local who saw me with my trusty yoga mat and pointed me in the right direction, and I arrived at Yoga Living.  Back in Vietnam, I must say it still had that militant feel about it, but it was quiet and safe; the energy was evident as I walked up the stairs.  The class was lovely and hot (The tropics turn most yoga into Bikram.  That’s why they handed out small towels at the desk!), with a number of challenges postures, the sort I leave out when practicing by myself; really Bird of Paradise sounds pretty, but kind of isn’t, and standing splits – well even floor splits elude me.  Happily I went back for a second class, this time chaperoned by the Boy because it was dark and I was/am still suffering from PTSD over the Phnom Penh incident.  Well, I finally got one of those callisthenics classes.  She was late; 10 minutes late.  It was a mismatch of Ashtanga-gone-wrong postures, with no transitions, and at times dangerous.  Headstand with no warm up or instruction?  And bang on time, she finished.  No Savasana.  No Namaste.  No nothing.  Oh well, when in Saigon ...

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And now here I am in Kathmandu, Nepal.  Up three flights of ladder-like stairs to Pranamaya Yoga.  Greeted by Emily.  We yogis are the only species that bond for life at first meeting.  Vinyasa class, just challenging enough, and the first time I’ve felt warm since I arrived in Nepal 2 weeks ago.

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