This was an older course and the facilities were a bit rundown, but from the moment you stood on the first tee, you could see you were in for a treat. The first hole was a nice dogleg par four where you had to hit over 150m of water to reach the fairway, you then had to hit over more water to reach a raised green. It wasn’t a long hole but it was very challenging, with bunkers surrounding the green.
The next four or five holes were all extremely interesting and challenging, each with great views and any one of them could have been the signature hole on most courses. While playing the fifth hole, the train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok went through the middle of the course over the bridge shown.
We then played a short par three over water which was interesting. The caddies were laughing about the next par 3 and pointing to the next hole. It was only 70m but was straight up. You could just see the flag on the green, which had a 60° garden slop leading up to it. Bruce and Neil both got onto the green, but then Rosie had to go 10 meters closer to hit off, which meant an even steeper rise to get it up onto the green. She couldn’t see the flag from this angle. Unfortunately this was never going to happen, Rosie just doesn’t have a shot that goes up this quickly. Her ball crashed into the middle of the gardens, never to be seen again.
All the holes weaved through a valley, with a lot of water on the edges of the fairways. Another interesting feature was that they had three different nines, except that the A course was 9 holes, the B course 8 holes and the C course 10 holes. We played the A and C courses so we actually got to play the 19th hole instead of going there for a drink.
Bruce found this to be the most interesting course he has played and looks forward to going back and trying again. Playing the white tees, the course wasn’t long, but as usual, the water and plentiful bunkers made the level of difficulty very high.
