People come to Vietnam for the sea, the sun, a new rhythm of life and the chance to spend some time living in another country. But moving abroad does not mean your usual life simply stays somewhere back home. If you train regularly, pay attention to nutrition or are simply used to being active, very different questions start coming up quite quickly.
🏋️ That is exactly why we decided to explore the topic of sport in Vietnam separately.
But not through another universal guide about how to “train properly in Asia”. It is much more interesting to see what all of this looks like in the life of someone who has actually moved here and gradually adapted sport to a new city, climate and everyday routine.
Why I decided to talk about this at all
When you search for information about moving to Vietnam, it is fairly easy to find articles about neighbourhoods, accommodation, visas, cafés or beaches. Sport usually stays somewhere in the background, even though for many people it can directly affect which city they choose.
One person needs a gym a few minutes from home. Someone else wants to keep running. Someone is used to tracking protein and worries about whether familiar foods will be easy to find. And for someone, after a workout, the chance to get a massage, go to a sauna or simply recover properly matters more than another good café.
Da Nang has its own specifics too. The climate is hot, there are plenty of gyms, markets, seafood, fruit, massage places and wellness spaces, but routines that worked in another country do not always transfer here exactly as they are.
So instead of putting all of this together only from maps, reviews and other people’s lists, we decided to start with a person.
Meet Igor Lapshov
Igor lives in Da Nang, trains regularly and works with people who want to regain their energy and physical condition and build more sustainable habits around movement, nutrition and recovery.
Sport was already part of his life before the move, so in Vietnam he did not have to start everything from scratch. Instead, he had to understand how to maintain his familiar lifestyle in completely different conditions.
And the move itself did not actually begin with sport at all.
I had the opportunity to buy my first motorcycle. But that money ended up becoming my financial cushion for moving to Vietnam.
At some point, Igor realised that instead of buying the motorcycle, he wanted to try something he had been thinking about for a long time: move abroad, see more of the world and live somewhere sunnier.
So the money for one dream unexpectedly became the beginning of another.
We will leave the full story of his move for a separate article, because there is a much more interesting question there than simply “why Da Nang”: how did Igor end up in Vietnam, and why did he decide to stay?
What we want to explore with him
We are not interested in the perfect picture of an active life by the sea, but in the ordinary reality after moving.
How do you choose a gym when nice photos are not enough and the equipment genuinely matters to you? Why can air conditioning become one of the main criteria in summer? What happens to running and your usual training intensity when it is hot for much of the year?
We will look at food separately too. Which familiar products become less convenient or more expensive than back home, and which, on the contrary, become easier to include in everyday meals thanks to local markets, seafood and fruit?
We will also talk about recovery: massages, saunas, cold plunges and the places people who live in Da Nang permanently actually use.
And we will definitely cover a less pleasant but important scenario as well: where do you go if you get injured during training or suddenly feel unwell?
When it comes to gyms, food, the city and his own life, we will show them through his observations. And medical, physiological and other claims where personal experience alone is not enough will be additionally checked by the FROGI editorial team.
Gradually, this should become more than another list of the “best places for sport in Da Nang”, but a broader picture of life for someone whose training routine does not end the moment they buy a ticket to another country.
The next part of this story is about Igor himself: how choosing between his first motorcycle and moving abroad ended with a life in Vietnam.
👉 [Read next: how Igor moved to Da Nang]
Officially, I'm an editor of city media around the world. But really, I'm just that traveling frog who chases adventures, connects people, and discovers new ways to make life a little more meaningful, exciting, and full of wonder every day
