Bangkok’s First Full Scale Indoor Climbing Gym

Okay, this is not in California, but I’m here in Bangkok for the winter Holidays to visit my family, so I’m going to write about cool things that I do here. Since I started climbing a few months ago, I was afraid that not climbing at all for a month would cause me to lose all the conditioning that I worked up to. Luckily, I found that a new indoor climbing gym had opened up in November in Bangkok! Domain Rock Gym is the first full scale indoor climbing gym in Thailand, which means that you can boulder, top rope, and lead climb here.  The gym also offers other amenities like a little cafe, shower, restroom, and locker. A yoga studio is looking to be opened early 2014.

The gym can be easily found and is located in Bang Na near the Bang Na BTS station. A day pass is 400 baht for adults and 300 for those under 18. You don’t need your own gear to climb here; they rent out everything you’ll need and even provide a free belay lesson if you want to top rope.

The gym is really nice and clean, and I had a blast climbing here. It was overall a really beginner friendly gym with tons of beginner routes and easier boulder routes, but don’t worry, if you’re already rocking it hardcore, there will be some challenges for you here as well. The routes aren’t too cluster, which makes the wall look really clean and the route easily spotted. One big problem with busy gyms in the U.S. is that they try to add 5-6 routes on one rope and makes it hard to distinguish the routes or find your bolts particularly when there are red and orange route next to each other. Luckily, that won’t be a problem here with just 3 routes on one rope.

The route setting is pretty solid generally. I only climbed 6-7 top rope routes and maybe the same for bouldering. The top rope walls are tall, which is great.

I took my little sister here for her first time and she was crushing it like nobody’s business. I think she really enjoyed it and we’ll most likely return. I was a bit nervous at first to have her belay me. Mostly because she weight maybe half of me and also just 11 years old. But she was able to belay me really well and I didn’t fall a break my legs.

I’m glad that this gym opens up in Bangkok. I hope that it helps inspire more Thai people to become interested in climbing and help grow the community even larger.