Michael Batson

One of the things about travel is the chance to experience what’s different about a place: it’s people, customs, their behaviours, and habits. Some of the different approaches people take are interesting. Some can make you think, and some others can be a little irritating and exercise gyms are no different. But let’s face it, if everyone and everything they did was the same, the world would be a pretty boring place. My experience of using weight gyms in Cambodia goes back over the length of time I’ve been going there; from my first ever visit over 20 years ago to the present day. Much of what I compare gyms in Cambodia to is what I’m used to back home where admittedly, I trained during off-peak hours where often I was the only person there or it was me and two other blokes often older than me. There were no crowds, you didn’t have to wait for equipment, there wasn’t much unwanted noise (apart from the music), no one filming or posing, and no skimpy outfits.

On my first ever trip to Cambodia I recall walking down Monivong Boulevard, the main drag in Phnom Penh, nearby to where I was staying at Boeung Kak Lake and seeing a weight gym. It was on the corner in a rundown building so there was view through one side and out through another. It was open-air there being no windows. It was crowded, full of people sweating in the hot season with temperatures well into the thirties and high humidity. Being used to an altogether more temperate climate, I couldn’t imagine pumping iron in this smothering heat, insects and all. It was basic to put it mildly. Lots of things in Cambodia then were basic and often hard to come by. There was no flash equipment or sophisticated machines; a gym for weights not an exercise centre as the king of high intensity Dorian Yates would put it. His view on most gyms is that when you walk in, they’re full of people who look like they never go to a gym but then he was Mr. Olympia, so he might well think that. Years later, living in Phnom Penh, I found myself a fully signed up member of an open-air gym but one with the latest equipment and its own tropical twist besides. On different days I’ve come across coconuts among the dumbbells, rats in the changing room, large crabs walking across the floor, the odd Arctic dog breed (go figure) running about, the shrill sounds of roosters declaring another day, and one time a man sitting there with a wad of cash that looked to be about USD10k!

Weight training like football, is pretty much universal, but the people can put their own spin on things. The technique is the same and depending on where you are the equipment comes in standard form. Gyms take on a similar appearance once a certain socio-economic level is attained. Some gyms retain an old school feel on purpose. When I was a teenager, I went to a gym in my home town that had open drains and duckboards on the floor. All the equipment was harvested from a bygone era and nothing matched. The place reeked of sweat and most of the members were dedicated trainers; solitary but it being before the era of mobile phones people spoke to each other though not a lot. Membership was cheap and it appealed to a certain crowd. That gym was that way by choice, but when I went to Cambodia a gym was that way due to circumstances.

Unlike football though, which can be played anywhere with very little equipment, weight training and exercising as recreation requires time, resources, and energy, so all assume a certain socio-economic level to be able to choose to spend your time and effort on solo (some would say selfish) pursuits. You also need the facilities within a certain proximity. So not much good if, as in Cambodia for the vast majority, you spend all your waking hours just earning enough to feed the family and trying to onboard enough calories to get through the physical rigours of yet another hard day planting, labouring, or waiting for your next fare.

Back during my first time living in Phnom Penh nearby to my digs under the Japanese Friendship Bridge was Paddy’s Gym. At night it was dark, barely illuminated, and poorly ventilated. Basic was an apt description and it was 1USD a visit. Most of the users were locals. Aside from me there were few foreigners. One was Douglas, a tall athletic Brazilian playing professional football in Cambodia’s fledging national league. It was noisy. The equipment was odds and sods, and you often had to search around for sets of things. Sometimes there weren’t any so you just made do. That was a bit like Cambodia at the time as a country, as they were rebuilding after years of disruption and destruction, coming from a low base but hoping and wanting better.

Not long after I came across another gym with basic equipment in a side street off Norodom Boulevard. It was frequented by wannabe kickboxers and from the looks of them, bodyguards who’d come in wearing their safari suits, strip off their top down to their undershirt and get training in their business shoes. Unlike many businesses that have a sign out front ‘No Bodyguards’ they seemed to make up a fair number of the clientele. The entrance fee was also one dollar and if you wanted to use the cardio equipment, such as it was, that was extra – electricity being relatively expensive in Cambodia, and the equipment was pay-as-you-go.

I then joined the Physique Club at the wonderful Hotel Cambodiana. They have a good range of free weights but their machines are rather outdated, save for some new investments made of late. It’s quiet. The clientele are mainly older expats who seem to have formed a sort of social club and sit about between their sets chewing the fat mainly about issues that pique the interest of expats: food, liquor, visas, costs of living, and their health issues. It has a generous changing area at least for a Cambodian gym which tend to not give these facilites much thought. At Physique the changing room looks a bit like a gentlemen’s club but the bench space for actual changing is still pretty limited and like all these gyms, there’s no privacy. The best thing about Physique Club is the setting, it’s right on the river. When I first joined the gym there was a beach but now this has disappeared beneath a promenade that extends along the riverside all the way to the ferry dock to the Areiksart Ferry Port across the Mekong River and to the satellite city on the Chroy Changvar peninsula. After your workout it’s very pleasant to spend time at the pool on top of the gym and watch the river traffic, read a book or back in the day, the excellent Cambodia Daily, now sadly defunct.

More upmarket and popular with rich Khmers and expats is The Place on the corner of Rue Pasteur and Street 282 in Boeung Keng Kang Ti Muoy (or BKK 1) a fashionable area full of old mansions (or used to be), government buildings, flash apartments, and embassies. You’re likely to see a range of luxury vehicles parked up outside. It too has a swimming pool though not large (many of the larger and some not so large hotels also have a weight gym and swimming pools and offer either day usage or periodic memberships). Like Club Physique, The Place is fully air-conditioned which adds substantially to the membership fee – upwards of several hundreds of dollars for a year. That’s a snip for wealthy locals or those on western salaries for facilities that would likely cost much more than that wherever those foreigners hail from, so they probably don’t think twice about the expense.

These days I’m a fully paid-up member of Elite Fitness which has several branches across Phnom Penh. You can use any of their branches. So far, I’ve been to five of these but mostly I use just two that are within about a 20-minute walk of home. These are BKK (Boeung Keng Kang) on Street 71 and KRR (Kirirom) on Street 278. Others I’ve been to are: BTK (Boeung Trabek) at the corner of Street 474 and 101; Phsar Thmei (New Market) on Street 49; and the branch where I joined Phsar Dei Huy on Street 1986 way out near the airport. Most Elite gyms have a separate warm-up area. Most of the ones I’ve seen are quite large except for KRR which is tucked away down at the back with not much room at all. Phsar Thmei and BTK have these upstairs on another level. I’m not sure if they offer exercise classes or not. There are treadmills and exercise bikes but the bikes I’ve seen don’t seem to have resistance settings so you’re sat there literally just spinning the pedals.

There are personal trainers you can hire through the gym at fixed rates or as it seems, through individual arrangements. I’m not sure how that works. Back home a personal trainer is employed by the gym or if they’re solo then the pay a commission to the gym for using their equipment but I’m not sure that’s how it works here. I notice that most personal trainers here are very hands on in a way that wouldn't be tolerated back home and likely would result in a sexual harrassment complaint. Male trainers put their hands all over their women clients sometimes pushing them into stretches and holding them there. Women put their hands on other women, and men on men though I've yet to see a woman trainer handle a male client. Membership at Elite is available at a daily rate of just USD3, or monthly, quarterly, six-monthly, or yearly. I joined up for 12 months for just USD108 at Phsar Dei Huy which represents great value for money as I use the gym 5-6 days a week and is much cheaper than what I’m used to paying back at home.

If you need gym clothing then the nearest market is the best place or even at the plethora of road side stalls. A lot of gym and exercise clothing is manufactured in Cambodia is the garment sector, the country’s largest manufacturing sector employing thousands of workers. Some of the garments exported to North America or to Europe, the big-name brands like Under Armour, Adidas, and Nike among many others, you can buy locally for a fraction of what you’d pay back home.

Other gyms I’ve been to in Phnom Penh include: Hanuman on Street 2000, fairly basic with the usual small changing facilities, extremely hot and with really loud rap music ($1,50 daily use); My Fitness Sports Club on Street 1005, bigger facility with a nice pool which over the weekend is full of famlies and their children swimming lessons, there’s also a restaurant and the kind of place you could spend all day ($4); Dara Airport Hotel off Russian Boulevard, also has a pool, better changing facilities, okay but not fantastic weight facilities and comes with a spa if that’s your thing, and there's the hotel restaurant and cafe ($5); Keven Fitness on Street 440 near the Russian Market (Toul Tompoung) though I haven’t used it but just popped my head in.

The best thing about gyms usage in Cambodia is that many of the facilities are good, some very good, clean, and if something breaks, they fix it; not next week or month but the same day or next day, though some work practices defy the usual standards of health and safety practices you may be used to. Things don’t stay broken for long. This is great, and a lot better than the franchise gym I used back home where things sat broken with signs saying so and thanking users for their patience while it's waiting to be fixed, for weeks and in one instance, months. The staff fix equipment on the spot and labour being cheap and plentiful, there’s always people cleaning the place. Food is usually available also. You can buy drinks like protein shakes which they’ll make up for you or fruit and one or two have kitchens serving hot food. Outside there are the usual plentiful street food stalls which being Asia you can order in. so a lot of about going to the gym is the same as back home, for better or worse but some things are different which is always makes things interesting.