Training In a Foreign Country

Brazil has a shitload of gyms, good exchange rate, sweet beaches and I’m not even going to get into the women, 'kay?

Downside is that it can be semi-dangerous in some of the bigger cities (mostly Rio and Sao Paulo) and the language isn’t easy. Not too hard, but definitely not easy.

Thanks for the info LUEshi. Brazil looks like a great option too. There are really too many options at this point!

How are the women in Thailand?

How safe is Brazil? I assume that at least half us Americans hear about how dangerous and corrupt the country is, is bullshit.

[quote]A-Dog wrote:
Interesting.
I am doing the EXACT same thing, but i leave in 3 weeks.

4 months of whatever I want.

First, to England, then to Ireland, then 2 months living in a seaside town in Sicily, then to Croatia and Spain, France and wherever I feel like.

I have taken a look at a few bodyweight programs, but mostly i’m banking on there being gyms all over.[/quote]

If you land in Cork Ireland let me know i can help you some bit :slight_smile:
Better off messaging me i dont check this part of the forum much.

It’s just like anywhere else; don’t expect to walk into a dangerous neighborhood without getting fleeced. The cops also do not fuck around.

Regions of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Campinas, Belem and Manaus can definitely be scary, but the locals themselves will tell you to swing wide of areas where there’s a lot of drug traffic, robberies, gang shootings, etc.

Salvador (Bahia state) is one of the safest big cities I’ve ever been in, probably because people there like to party. I’ve heard good things about Rio Grande do Sul, Florianopolis, Amazonas state has some REALLY cool stuff to do, as does Para, etc etc.

07:50 and Ive been r0lled already

[quote]Ph03nix wrote:
Me and some friends are planning on doing the same in a year or two. Try looking up an island called Koh-Tao in Thailand. Its apparently a good place to learn scuba diving as well as having two Muay Thai gyms and cheap short term accommodation and some longer term stuff.

Check out http://koh-tao.ws/ for more info about whats on the island. Wikitravel also has info about it. http://wikitravel.org/en/Ko_Tao[/quote]

I’ll second Koh Tao. I’m in Pattaya, now, and a couple of the interns have been there and love it.

Thailand’s also cheap as hell, you can probably live off of 600 US a month, if not a bit less.

I’m not sure about gyms in Koh Tao, but there are quite a few where I am. You can also get steroids really cheap in Thailand.

Search for the Thailand trilogy. Shugart went to Pattaya, which is the same place I’m in, and wrote up three articles on it. It’ll give you a good look about Pattaya.

And yeah, if you’d like to learn to scuba dive, Thailand (except Pattaya, where I am haha) has excellent diving.

Hey everyone, I’m the other half going on this trip. Thanks for all the replies from everyone.

The goal of the trip: we want to focus on lifting, women, growing an online business, and enjoying our adult lives for once, rather than being stuck in a 9 to 5 daily grind. We figure a year out of college is the best time to design an ideal lifestyle, rather than having that realization once we’ve started families or find ourselves stuck in a miserable job.

Since we’ll both be living off savings ($10K+ for each of us) and hopefully making some extra money through online business, we need to be somewhere cheap. All the suggestions so far have been wonderful.

Nothing constructive to add with this post – just a quick “thank you” to everyone for the helpful feedback, and a request to keep it coming!

[quote]Corkonian wrote:
A-Dog wrote:
Interesting.
I am doing the EXACT same thing, but i leave in 3 weeks.

4 months of whatever I want.

First, to England, then to Ireland, then 2 months living in a seaside town in Sicily, then to Croatia and Spain, France and wherever I feel like.

I have taken a look at a few bodyweight programs, but mostly i’m banking on there being gyms all over.

If you land in Cork Ireland let me know i can help you some bit :slight_smile:
Better off messaging me i dont check this part of the forum much.[/quote]

Cheers mate, I’m VERY much looking forward to Ireland. Cork is an option, and if I remember i’ll shoot you a PM.

[quote]eyver wrote:
Hey everyone, I’m the other half going on this trip. Thanks for all the replies from everyone.

The goal of the trip: we want to focus on lifting, women, growing an online business, and enjoying our adult lives for once, rather than being stuck in a 9 to 5 daily grind. We figure a year out of college is the best time to design an ideal lifestyle, rather than having that realization once we’ve started families or find ourselves stuck in a miserable job.

Since we’ll both be living off savings ($10K+ for each of us) and hopefully making some extra money through online business, we need to be somewhere cheap. All the suggestions so far have been wonderful.

Nothing constructive to add with this post – just a quick “thank you” to everyone for the helpful feedback, and a request to keep it coming![/quote]

Mate, I’ve saved a bit more than that (in $AUD), but not a lot.

Because there’s two of you, you can split a lot of your costs. Cook all your own food and so on. I’m in the same boat with my gf.

Have you considered somewhere like Turkey? A relative of mine has a house there, and it’s a pretty cool cheap option too.

[quote]A-Dog wrote:
Have you considered somewhere like Turkey? A relative of mine has a house there, and it’s a pretty cool cheap option too.[/quote]

I would avoid most eastern Euro countries. Every gym you go to will reek of BO since the guys don’t use deodorant. It smells like most of them don’t bathe, either. Eastern Euro women are hot as fuck though. Romanian women are my personal favorite. It is cheap as hell to live there too if you get an apartment or something.

If the women are beautiful and the rent is cheap, I can handle the B.O. for an hour or two of my day.

[quote]djoy wrote:
If the women are beautiful and the rent is cheap, I can handle the B.O. for an hour or two of my day.
[/quote]

Agreed.

How does everyone cope with foreign languages?

For example, I’m a typical American and really only know English. If going to South/Central America, I feel confident I could pick up sufficient Spanish, and even look forward to that. But how does everyone cope when going somewhere like Eastern Europe, for example? Do most people already speak English?

[quote]djoy wrote:
If the women are beautiful and the rent is cheap, I can handle the B.O. for an hour or two of my day.
[/quote]

Good point.

  1. Make an effort to actually speak it, instead of just sticking to English speaking enclaves like 99% of tourists do. You won’t do it well, but for the most part people will appreciate the effort and you’ll make friends as a result and have a much better time.

Unless you’re in France. In which case, just say something in German and they’ll all surrender. ZING!

  1. Aside from making an effort to speak (small talk is not hard in most romance languages; we’re talking a couple afternoons here of effort unless you’re a total dunce), to learn the language, get one of those “501 Verbs” books, a pocket dictionary and WATCH TV. Seriously. Watching TV and reading verb books while you’re on the can is one of the BEST things you can do to learn a new language. Knowing your verbs by heart helps you conjugate correctly, which is essential for making any kind of sense, and TV gives you a good grasp of both the vernacular and prepositions.

Getting used to the way prepositions are used in different languages is a stone bitch. Most of the time they make absolutely no sense translated back to English, which is why you should never translate and always associate. Learn your vocabulary well and it’ll get to the point where you start spitting stuff straight out, instead of having to go “Uhhhh…” every time someone asks you to pass the salt. A half hour or so of dedicated language practice before you go out for the day goes a long way.

Practice pronunciation with natives and imitate their manner of speech and rhythm whenever appropriate. Most guidebooks and language software suites are worse than useless as far as this goes, as they often (a) are wrong, or (b) focus on one narrow region of the country as representative of the whole.

Have fun, don’t get too wrapped up in it. You’re probably not going to learn it in a month or six months or even a year. In the time that you have you may not even approach minimum proficiency. Just enjoy yourself.

(Also, the above applies mostly to romance languages, at least in my experience. If you’re in Africa, Asia or the Middle East I would probably just hire a cabbie or something as their languages are usually fucking hard to speak correctly.)

[quote]eyver wrote:
djoy wrote:
If the women are beautiful and the rent is cheap, I can handle the B.O. for an hour or two of my day.

Agreed.

How does everyone cope with foreign languages?

For example, I’m a typical American and really only know English. If going to South/Central America, I feel confident I could pick up sufficient Spanish, and even look forward to that. But how does everyone cope when going somewhere like Eastern Europe, for example? Do most people already speak English?[/quote]

I’m English, and whenever we go on holiday, we only ever know the basics- thankyou etc.

I know, rude isn’t it!

90% of the people you’ll be talking to in other countries in europe know english, we always find our way round the areas easy.

How about food products abroad?

Right now we’re slowly narrowing down our choices to South America (Brazil or Argentina), Central America (Panama), Thailand, and then Eastern Europe (Turkey).

Does anyone know about the availability of good whole food sources in these countries, i.e. food that would be condusive for bodybuilding at a resonable cost?