Around 600 sporty Thai and Nordic people joined on Sunday 29 October 2023 the first Nordic Run, organized jointly by all the Nordic embassies in Thailand.
The embassies had quickly sold out all the 500 participants, which the Benjakitti Park had allowed as the maximum number. But many who couldn’t register came to run anyway – ScandAsia being one of them.
The run started and ended behind the Queen Sirikit Convention Center in Bangkok where the sponsors had established booths in a horse shoe shape with a stage in the deep end. The sponsors where AstraZeneca, Autoliv, Ecco, Jotun, Kone, Linak, Novo Nordisk, Polar, SuperBakril, Tetra Pak and Valmet. All of them were prominently displayed on the back of all the running shirts.
The run started with short messages from the four Nordic ambassadors who were joined on the stage by Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt. Then there was a warmup session before the run started at exactly 7.00. The route was five kilometers – which many of the younger participants ran twice to make it ten kilometers. The run was not a race for time and there were no medals and winners – it was a race to showcase the Nordic way of life with a healthy dose of exercise.
For this writer it was a long overdue first time to see the famous park which won an award in Copenhagen recently. Apart from the outstanding landscaping of the park, it also incorporated many of the previous tobacco barns that have been re-purposed to be a handful of sports halls for active Bangkokians playing anything from indoor football to Ping-Pong and the new TEQBALL sport.
After the run, there we cookies from Landmark, baked in sausages from Fyns Bakery, water from TetraPak and bananas for all to replenish the energy.
