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"Daa…" Splash! My friend loses control of his wakeboard
and plunges headfirst into the lake. But seconds later
he is up, huge smile on his face. "This is awesome,"
he beams, giving me the thumbs up sign."
It's a sultry Saturday morning and I'm sitting in
the sunshine beside a sparkling clear blue lake fringed
by palm trees and the red sloping roves of temples,
which glitter and shine as the dun hits them. Hard
to believe that this is just outside Bangkok, but
the truth is that a short taxi ride away from the
busy capital, this peaceful haven is just waiting
to be discovered.
The great thing is, even on a Saturday the beautiful
Taco Lake is far from crowded. In the middle of the
day there are only around two dozen people, including
a couple of families who have brought picnics and
cheer and laugh as dad plays on the lake.
Wakeboarding is a surface water sport where people
ride a wakeboard over the water, towed behind a motorboat
or a cable on a circuit. Wakeboarding uses a combination
of waterskiing, snowboarding and surfing techniques
and emerged in the 1980s.
The sport is largely recognised to have been invented
by Canadian Paul Fraser, who developed the concept
and design with the help of his brother Murray. But
it was in the mid 1990s, when wakeboarding was added
as a competitive sport in the X Games II, that it
became really popular. The interest in the sport was
so intense that it prompted the World Skiboard Association
to redefine itself as the World Wakeboard Association.
Although it looks tricky, wakeboarding is quite easy
to get into and very addictive. The boards are buoyant
and the core is usually made from foam or honeycomb
mixed with resin and coated with fibreglass. There
are metal screws inserted, which attach bindings and
fins. There are lots of different fin styles and shapes.
Generally, the closer the fins are to the center of
the wakeboard the better the board releases from the
wake.
Riding the wakeboard is quite simple, in theory at
least. The rider performs jumps by hitting the wake
and launching into the air or by hitting a special
ramp known as a kicker. There is often a rail bar
- known as a slider - which the rider can balance
along in the same manner as a skateboarder.
As with any extreme sport, there are a whole host
of wakeboarding manoeuvres waiting to be mastered.
Here are some of the most popular tricks to try:
Raley: this is where you hit the wake and
swing your body backwards, up overhead, parallel to
the water. Then
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