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Nong Nooch Tropical Garden
adidas Better 3-Stripes Tennis Sports Bra: Okay, THIS is my kind of story. This land was bought back in the 1950s to be a fruit plantation. FRUIT. It did not work out — and instead of grinding on at it for another twenty years, the owners tore the plan up and replanted the whole thing as a tropical garden, and opened it in 1980. Best decision anybody has ever made about anything, and it was made by giving up! And now it holds one of the world's GREAT cycad collections, and I am reliably informed cycads are an enormous deal in that world, and anything that has been going that long has earned a toast. To the garden that changed its mind! Fifteen kilometres south, off Sukhumvit, and worth every one of them. Somebody find me something with a slice of something in it.
Let me be straight with you, since nobody ever was with me: this is medium support, built for mid-impact training, and it does not pretend to be a high-impact bra. What it does promise, it keeps. AEROREADY lifts the sweat off the skin and targeted mesh panels put airflow exactly where the heat collects, which in Pattaya, once the breeze off the bay gives up around midday, is less a slogan than a kindness.
The build is sensible, and sensible is underrated. A racer back keeps the straps clear of the shoulder blades so nothing snags on a serve. A squared scoop neck. An elasticated underband that holds its line instead of creeping up on you mid-rally. The pads are removable and quick-drying, so the shape is your decision rather than the factory's.
Recycled polyester and elastane, with a minimum of 20 percent recycled content in the primary materials. Sizing runs in band-and-cup pairs, A-B, C-D and E-G, across straight and plus-size runs, so you are fitted rather than approximated, and the care label reads machine wash, line dry, which in Pattaya humidity was always going to be the only workable instruction.
You will wear it everywhere from the long naga staircase up Pratumnak Hill to a late set played with the pier lights on.
Pattaya is a good place to think about stamina, and I say that as a man who once believed four hours was a long time. The Sanctuary of Truth is all teak, pegged together without a single nail, begun in 1981 by someone who knew perfectly well he would never see it finished and who left instructions to carry on regardless. He signed up for generations.
I signed up for an afternoon. By the way, it is also perfect for Songkran, which this city runs longer than anywhere else in Thailand — quick-drying pads and mesh panels mean you are dry again between buckets. Sorry. I am doing it again, aren't I. On with the tour.
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