DhaniJones

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The learning experience

American football player Dhani Jones treks the globe looking for unique adventures in sports and culture.

WHILE some athletes were happy to get a well-deserved break during their off season, American football player Dhani (pronounced “De-ha-ni”) Jones was busy filming a travel series, Dhani Tackles The Globe.

For 50 days, the 32-year-old Cincinnati Bengals footballer battled jet lag, exhaustion and culture shock as he flew to 10 countries and learned new sports – many of them unfamiliar to the global audience. It was a gruelling schedule to be sure but Jones said that he was physically well-prepared thanks to his career as a professional American footballer.

“My off season is done working out. So I’m always working out and doing something very active,” he said during a recent phone interview from the United States.

The bigger challenge, however, was to enter a country without holding any stereotypes or “ill thoughts”.

“I went in there with a clear mind so that I could learn and become a part of the culture and ingrain myself with the society so that I could take back as much as I could with me,” he said.

He added: “It’s important when you travel to have a blank slate and don’t compare and contrast other countries. I just let people be who they are because they’re going to let me be who I am. It’s as much a culture shock for them as it is for me!”

Jones had known the show’s production company for some time, and the company would often think of different ways to involve Jones in a production.

“Everybody knows that I love to travel, play sports and meet different people. We thought, why not put all of that together under one roof and that became Dhani Tackles The Globe,” he said.

In the first season, Jones visited Thailand, Switzerland, England, Singapore, Spain, Ireland, Australia, Cambodia, New Zealand and Russia. He had a crash course in the national sports of these countries, such as rugby in England, muay thai in Thailand, a 400-year-old Northern Spanish game called jai alai (also dubbed “ballet with bullets”) and a brutal “stick and ball game” called hurling in Ireland.

In order to learn so many different sports in such little time, Jones had to learn to be open and allow his body to learn them. Eventually, he even fell in love with a new sport: sailing, which he took up in New Zealand.

“If I were ever to take another sport professionally, it would be sailing,” said Jones who described the sport as “phenomenal”.

“I love being on the water, I love being on the ocean,” he added.

Some sports, however, came with a bigger challenge, to say the least.

One of the most difficult ones he took up was Schwingen (pronounced “swinging”) aka Swiss wrestling.

Learning and playing Schwingen was an experience in itself, said Jones.

Even the town where he trained for it – Hasliberg – was “intense”.

“That area was remote, the sport was difficult, the terrain was hard, training was hard – everything about it was intense. It was a great place to be and learn who I am as a person. And that was shown quite well in the show,” he said.

Then there was pradal serey – Cambodian kick-boxing.

“The sheer violence of that sport, and just being in Cambodia was enlightening .... It took a lot out of me,” he said.

Still, he found pradal serey very moving.

“I learned so much from the sport as well as from the people.” Jones even visited ice-cold St Petersburg in Russia where he learned sambo, a type of weapons defense movement sports. However, in order to prepare for it he had to take up ballet.

“Ballet was really nice,” he said, laughing. “I actually took one ballet class when I was in college. So, I sort of remembered a little bit but the intensity of this class was more difficult than the one I did in college.”

The mobility and flexibility he picked up in ballet certainly helped him with sambo. He was also impressed with dragon boat racing, which he took up in Singapore.

“I felt as though (Singapore’s) melting pot was shown very well through the sport itself. We competed against Germans, French, Singaporeans and other groups of people from so many places. It represented what Singapore is today.”

Jones’ mission was to understand the national and local sport of a country and the culture of the people.

On his popular blog (dhani-blog.travelchannel.com), Jones certainly put aside his reservations for the show and actually ate fried grasshoppers and other insects in Thailand!

He described the buggy cuisine as “small explosions of bad complex flavours” on his blog and concludes in the end that the “ants are the best”.

Singapore seemed to change his mind about eating.

“Every place where I went in Singapore to eat – the food was amazing. Eating out is like a part of life!” he said.

“Durian was an experience in itself,” said Jones, who tried the pungent fruit in Singapore. Dhani Tackles The Globe will begin its second season in the United States next month, and Jones said that Malaysia, unfortunately, was not on the list of countries he visited in that season (or in the first season). But he hopes to make the trip one day.

“I’m open to going to any country and Malaysia will be a wonderful one to (visit),” he said.

Dhani Tackles The Globe premieres on the Discovery Travel & Living channel (Astro channel 707) today at 9pm.