Bangkok...here we come...The Pinehurst Golf and Country Club...

The Royal Selangor Golf Club plays a 'home-and-away' interport game with the Royal Bangkok Sports Club every year, with the RSGC team visiting Bangkok usually at the beginning of the year.

Pakdokter and my usual golf 'kakis' took advantage of booking our flights way in advance and were lucky to have secured return-tickets to Bangkok on Malaysia Airlines at just over RM300!

With internet bookings at our finger-tips we were also able to secure comfortable luxurious hotel rooms located at the convenient location of Sukhumvit Soi 11 at a bargain. The Grand President Hotel, Bangkok, is highly recommended if you are thinking of a trip to Bangkok.

pakHyder,pakTgAzman,pakdokter and pakZaid..

RSGC has several reciprocal arrangments with golf clubs in the Bangkok region. With our introduction cards, the four of us, made it to the Pinehurst Golf and Country Club for the first day of golf early Friday morning. The Pinehurst is an easy one hour drive from the hotel, located not too far from the old Don Muang International Airport of Bangkok.

The reciprocal arrangements between our two clubs allowed us to play for a free green fee ! All we had to pay for were the 250 bahts for the caddy and the 800 bahts for the buggy. That's a cheap RM65 for a game of golf in a first class golf course in Bangkok.

pakTgAzman (whose handicap was 28 two months ago!) now plays like a single-handicapper..

The Pinehurst must have been built on a swamp-land or a former rice-field! Water was in play in almost every hole. If you did not have to cross a lake at the tee, you will have streams or lakes on one or both sides of the fairway. If you are a wild hitter, you better bring a lot of golf balls with you. If you do not believe me, you can ask my good friend pakZaid Ibrahim !

a luxurious villa at the resort..


water, water, water.....

Pinehurst is a 27-hole golf course. We played the West and North Courses, and from the blue tee the course measured 6492 yards for a par-72 course. Pakdokter played quite well for the 1st Nine West Course returning a score of 50 with one par to boot. PakZaid and pakTgAzman both returned a score of 51 while the 'tired' pakHyder scored 53.

this was his third ball into the water...

a grinning and cheeky pakTgAzman after a 'birdie' at the par-5 hole No 5 of the North Course..

At the 2nd Nine North Course, pakTgAzman was in his best 'element' and returned a score of 44 with a par and a 'birdie' to boot. PakHyder improved with a score of 51 and the 'old' men of the group, pakdokter and pakZaid only managed a score of 54 each.

We played a game of partnership, changing the partnership after every 6 holes and played a game against each other as well.

So, looking at the returns, I am sure you can guess who collected the most bahts!

but he was too scared of his wife to have this picture taken properly...he was trying to hide behind the girls....

Caddies in Bangkok courses are well trained in their job. However their inability to speak a good-enough English is a disadvantage. They earn 200 bahts from the 250 bahts that we pay to the club for the caddy and they take home all the tips they earn from the golfer. They do not get a monthly salary and has no medical benefits either. So their earnings are not much different from their counterparts in Indonesia or at the RSGC either.

Golf Camaraderie...

In my first post when I started blogging last year, I commented on how addictive golf was for me despite having started to play the game quite late in my life. I used to feel very intimidated when I played with other people as I was very conscious of how bad my game was and quite often I played alone in the middle of the day when I was sure that no one else would be playing at the course.

As I became better at my game I became more comfortable to play with others and discovered the joys of golf camaraderie.

I have met and made friends with many new people at the golf clubs where I belong and have also made friends from other clubs locally and overseas whenever I had the opportunity to play for my club against these clubs in interclub and interport matches.

Last week I was fortunate to have been asked to accommodate Mr Alastair Anderson, a lawyer from Perth in Scotland, who was on holiday in Malaysia and had walked-in to our club for a game of golf. As I was playing three-ball that morning with Mr Hyder Ali and Mr Zaid Ibrahim, we were more than happy to have Alastair join our flight.

Alastair's father-in-law, Mr A E Brown, was a member of the RSGC way back in the seventies when he was a research scientist with the Rubber Research Institute (RRI). In fact Mr A E Brown's name is engraved on one of the boards of the club's dining room, having won one of the many annual competitions held at the club.

Alastair is quite a fanatic golfer himself, I suppose not much different from pakdokter. He had made the stop in Kuala Lumpur after having spent a week golfing daily in Pattaya. He told me that he had signed up to become a member of the Pattaya Golf Society, and every morning he would go to a designated pub in downtown Pattaya where he would sign up with 20 or so other golfers and moved on from there for a mini-golf tournament at one of the many golf courses in Pattaya. And all this for just 600 baht a game!

Alastair invited and offerred to host pakdokter for golf games at his home clubs in Perth should pakdokter make it to Scotland some time in the future. Pakdokter would certainly look up Alastair if and when the opportunity arises....

Alastair at the tee at the par-3 hole No. 4 Old Course of the RSGC...

The same week pakdokter also had the opportunity to play with one Mr Gowraf, a 28 year old Indian national from Chennai who was also in Kuala Lumpur on a holiday. Gowraf plays to a handicap of 2 and is a regular in the Indian Professional Tour. He started playing golf when he was 10 and will probably soon be in the same ranks as the other internationally established Indian professional golfers like Arjun Atwal, Jyothi Rhandawa etc.

It was such a pleasure to play with such a good player and how easy he made it look to play regulation on in most of the holes.

Surabaya Retreat (VI) ...the 'Battle Royale' at Ciputra...

We had almost the whole of Sunday to kill as our return flight to Kuala Lumpur was at 655pm in the evening. Three golfers went home on the early afternoon flight and Pak Zahardin was hijacked by his partner, Fiona, to the Majapahit Spa. So the remaining seven die-hard golfers decided to go back to the Ciputra for another round of golf.

pakRoslan, pakWanHusin, pakHajiAmin,pakTgAzman,pakdokter,pakHyder and pakZulRauf...

PakRoslan decided to let the three of us who were members of the RSGC to play in one flight while the remaining 4 STAROBA golfers played in the other flight. I suppose the two group of golfers had their own score to be settled!

the STAROBA golfers all focussed for the big stake.....

The three of us or the 'Royalists' as pakRoslan called us had our own score to be settled. PakTgAzman, who when he started playing with pakdokter about 3 months ago carried a handicap of 28 had been improving with every game and rightly so at this tournament had come out overall second. As he had been quite regularly winning our weekdays morning games at the club lately, and coming out Vice-Champion as he kept proclaiming himself since his winning yesterday, he was obviously very confident at the start of the game.

Before teeing off at the 1st hole of the Bukit Course, he thanked pakdokter for whatever he believed will be paid to him at the end of the game.....What a cocky bugger!!!

In my usual humble way, pakdokter told the two of them, no matter what the outcome, let us enjoy the game.

see how confident pakTgAzman is...hands on the shoulders with cigar between his fingers...wow..

Pakdokter sliced the ball from the tee at the 1st hole and almost lost the ball beyond the O.B. boundary. PakTgAzman tried to 'calm' pakdokter by advising pakdokter not to panic.... Pakdokter scored an 8 for the hole while pakHyder scored a 6 and pakTgAzman carded a 5 and took the skin for the whole.

Pakdokter noticed that the Bukit Course, although short, was rather narrow and tight with a fast and tricky green. So pakdokter put aside his driver and pulled out the ever reliable wood-3. The drive with the wood-3 was as good and as long as the driver and split the fairways!

The next two holes all 3 of us bogeyed the par 4 and par 3 holes and on the 5th hole pakdokter took his first 'skin' and was square against both the other two players.

Pakdokter bogeyed the remaining 5 holes except the par-3 hole-7 where a score of 5 was recorded. Although pakTgAzman birdied the par 3 and had a par at the hole-8, both of us were square at the end of the 1st Nine. PakHyder was down to both of us and collected no skin at all.

At the start of the 2nd Nine at the Danau Course pakTgAzman once again came to thank pakdokter for sponsoring his winnings! He was so confident that he took out his Havana cigar to give himself a premature victory treat! Pakdokter suspected that he was actually a little nervous.....

In his mind pakdokter told himself that he must bring pakTgAzman back a little down to earth ...

even with pakdokter there he still berani put his hands on the shoulders....

Pakdokter bogeyed the 1st hole and took the first skin. A par at the next par-4 gave pakdokter another skin. All 3 of us parred the next short island par-3 and with 3 more pars and 3 bogeys for the remaining 6 holes pakdokter carded a score of 40 for the Danau 9. PakTgAzman despite trying very hard and managing another 3 pars also for the remaining 6 holes, triple bogeyed twice to return a score of 45. Poor pakHyder was the ultimate casualty. With no skin to claim and a score of 50 for the Danau Nine, he become the overall Father Christmas!

the girls wanted this picture to be emailed to them...

Pakdokter collected 15 balls from pakHyder and 8 balls from pakTgAzman.....

The 2 big bottles of 'Bintang' was one hell of a thirst-quencher!

If Karpal's motto is "Singh is King" pakdokter's modest reminder will be " don't play play...."

pakHyder came out well from this bunker....





one of the many lovely villas at Ciputra...

Danau hole-5 par 4 where both pakdokter and pakTgAzman scored a par...

No!...it's in the water. Pakhyder wondering how his drive could not cross the lake at the last hole of the Danau Course....

hole-8 par 3 of the Danau Course....all 3 of us manage to bogey the hole


In case some of you readers think that this post is just another of pakdokter's big 'klentong', pakdokter has photographed our score card and has posted it here for your scrutiny....heh..heh..

Couple, couple.....at the Majapahit Spa...

Our group had originally planned to stay at the Majapahit Hotel for the Surabaya Retreat 2009 but the hotel was fully booked for a wedding reception. So we had to settle for the all-suite smoke free Surabaya Plaza Hotel instead.

My partner and , Fiona, had checked out the spa at the Majapahit and had come back with a glowing report of the place. So, after our game at the Bukit Darmo Golf Club, with a few hours to kill, a few of us decided to go to the Majapahit for a spa treatment to our severely bruised bodies.

The Majapahit is a lovely old hotel, built by the Sarkis Brothers, the same family who built the E & O Hotel in Penang. It is an interesting art-deco structure and has been preserved in good condition by the operators of the hotel..

Below is a series of pictures of the hotel, courtesy of my partner, who blogs and photoblogs at http://aginghippietales.blogspot.com You may read her posts of her experiences during the Surabaya Retreat 2009 at her web-site.

the courtyard reminds me of the Alhambra, in Granada, Spain...

the stairway to the second floor....

view of the courtyard from the second floor....

stained-glass panes along the corridor....

the court-yard at night....

lobby to the ball-room....

We only managed to get a booking for three persons for the spa treatment that afternoon as the spa was already heavily booked for the day. So pakdokter, pakWanHusin and pakRahman reported to the pleasant receptionist at the spa and was ushered to the pool-side to wait for our turn.

A short while later, the cute receptionist approached pakdokter and said...." maaf ya pakdokter, semua kamar terapi sudah ada booking. Jika bisa, bolih saya offer kamar honeymoon suite sama pakdokter, tapi ia untuk couple ya....." ( apologies pakdokter, all the treatment rooms have been booked. If you dont mind, can I offer you the honeymoon suite but it is for use of two persons..)

So pakdokter told her " Ooo....pasti bisa...nggak apa-apa....pakdokter sama pakWanhusin ini memang sudah lama couple couple...waktu sama-sama di SMA lagi..." ( Ooo...sure, no problem...in fact pakdokter and pakWanhusin have actually been a 'couple' ever since our high school days....)

So that was how pakdokter and pakWanHusin ended up having our spa treatment in the honeymoon suite of the Majapahit Spa. And what a treatment it was!

the interior of the Honeymoon Spa Room....the tub just fits two persons nicely for the milk bath, or spice bath, or floral bath......

a refreshed pakWanHusin after 3 hours of couple spa treatment...


The next day pakZahardin and his partner Fiona went for their 'honeymoon' spa treatment at the same place. Hopefully all the 'stains' left by pakdokter and pakWanHusin have been properly cleansed by the spa-keeper. We were told that pakZahardin and Fiona were given a 'couple' discount package! Not fair......

The Bukit Darmo Golf Club....

Bukit Darmo is about 45 minutes from our hotel, located in a residential suburb quite unlike that of the Tropicana Resort in Malaysia.

The golf course is rather flat and is bordered by many grand residential bungalows and highrise apartments. It is designed by Jack Nicklaus Jr. so it has features similar to the senior Nicklaus courses.

PakRoslan arranged the composition of players in the 3 flights based on scores from Taman Dayu as well as taking into consideration that there was going to be a Ryder's Cup format competition between the 6 STAROBA golfers against the 5 from the rest of the world.

pakZul, pakHyder and pakdokter......

Pakdokter was put in a flight of 3 which included pakZulkifli Rauf, and pakHyder Ali. All of us were alloted a handicap of 26 based on our Taman Dayu scores.

bungalows along the fairways...

As pakdokter had by now somewhat settled down, his game was much better and managed to accumulate a stableford score of 36. This was enough to help pakdokter achieve a 2-day 7th position from the overall of 11 players. Pakdokter also won the ball-sweep for the 2nd Nine with a score of 19 points. PakZulkifli Rauf scored 38 stableford points. PakHyder promised to make amends when we meet again at the next venue in Medan in April.

nita, pakdokter's and pakHyder's caddie....

Pakdokter had a very young caddie of 19 years old by the name of Yusnita or Nita for short. She had finished SMA ( high school) a year ago and had become a caddy for 6 months. Most of the female caddies at Bukit Darmo are not very good with their reading of the green. In fact the better caddies at this club would be the full time male caddies.

Nita told pakdokter that the caddies actually do not get a monthly salary. They are given 7500 rupiahs (about RM$2) a day for bus fare whether they come for work or not. During the weekends they earn 30,000 rupiah ( about RM$10) for every round of golf they caddied. And they take all the tips they earn from the golfer. During weekday they are not paid for the round of golf they caddie (the club takes all the caddie fee charged to the golfer) The caddie only earn the tip from the golfer. So the tip they earn from Malaysian golfers ( usually between 50,000 to 100,000 rupiah) is big money for them. No wonder they are so happy to caddy us!

So the Indonesian caddies who work at Tasik Puteri, Glenmarie etc are getting a better deal. They earn a regular salary, has medical insurance and earn tips above and over all these.

In fact pakdokter's caddy at the RSGC does not have such a great deal either. He gets no monthly salary. The club pays him RM15.50 for 9 hole and RM35 for 18 hole and he takes all the tip that pakdokter or any other golfer gives him. And he does not necessarily get to caddy everyday. He has to wait in queue for his turn because the demand for caddy is not there all the time.

pakHyder driving his ball onto the fairway...

pakZul doing a practice swing.....

Index 1 par 5.....

dinner at the Kartika restaurant....



Dinner was at an Indonesian Restaurant, the Kartika. Prizes for the winners were given away and pakHaji Amin was the overall champion for the 2 day event taking home the winning prize of 1 million rupiah. PakTengku Azman, the 'baby' of the group was overall 2nd and was very happy to earn 700,000 rupiah. PakTengku had instantly become a convert of the SIGC and has announced that he will be joining us in the Jakarta Tour in July.

In the Ryder Cup competition the STAROBA group managed to defeat the rest of the world.

pakHaji Amin became a millionaire....the overall champion of the Surabaya Retreat 2009...




pakdokter with his 'winnings"

Taman Dayu Golf Club...

On the second day we left early in the morning for a 90 minute bus ride towards the mountain to play at the Taman Dayu Golf Course, reputed to be the best golf course in Asia and the 50th best golf course in the world.

you are playing at the best golf course in Asia....

Going up to Taman Dayu, we passed by the Sidoarjo district where about 3 years ago an oil and gas exploration activity in the area caused a blow-out resulting in a severe mud-flow that submerged 20 villages and 3 industrial districts. Today that area has been contained by a retaining wall and the villagers have been compensated and relocated at a nearby housing project.

Pakdokter and many others in the group have never played at the Taman Dayu. So we were all looking forward to play at the Jack Nicklaus design course. Typical of most of Jack Nicklaus designs, the course is characterised by many long fairway bunkers as well as many deep bunkers guarding the greens.

pak Zahardin, Ira, pakdokter and Dewi...

As pakTengku Azman, who declared his RSGC handicap of 24, had shocked pakHaji Amin at Ciputra yesterday with 3 pars in a row in the first 3 holes, I guess Captain pakRoslan had to decide that the 4 Royalists should play together in the same flight so that at the end of the day he would be able to make a better assessment of what our handicaps should be!

two of the many villas at Taman Dayu which are available for rent ....

As usual the 4 of us decided to play 'skins' at 10,000 rupiah per skin and to play 3-1-1 against each other. We also played a partnership competition, rotating the partnership after every 6 holes.

pakZahardin appears very fond of playing from the bunker...

PakTengku Azman was very much in his element as he was leading the rest of us right from the start. Poor pakHyder, who had rested yesterday as he was still nursing his cold, had not yet recovered his form and was helplessly trying to do his best at damage control. We were only able to contain pakTengku in the partnership game where we were square in 2 of the 3 rounds.

In the round where pakdokter partnered pakHyder against pakTengku and pakZahardin, pakdokter was leading by one at the last hole and the opponents in their desperate attempt to square the game resorted to 'baca doa' behind pakdokter's back while he was putting from about 2 feet. And pakdokter did pull his putt and missed the hole......

pakTengku Azman at the tee at a par-3 hole....




pakHyder teeing off at another par-3 hole.....

good friends of pakdokter who 'baca doa' for pakdokter to fail to putt in from about 2 feet.....all for just 30,000 rupiah!

pakdokter and his angels from Taman Dayu....

dinner at a restaurant serving Java Timur cuisine located at the Galaxy Mall...

Generally Taman Dayu is a tough course. The heavy rain on the previous day made the fairway and the green somewhat damp and we found ourselves 'underclubbed' on many shots. The degree of difficulty was perhaps accurately described from the scores that the players carded. PakHaji Amin who was the champion for the day scored a total stableford points of 33 playing to a handicap of 19 and pakTengku Azman who played to a handicap of 24 scored 32 points for the runner up position.

Many of the good players return a score in the 20's only. So most of us had our handicaps adjusted higher for the next game at Bukit Darmo.

We left Taman Dayu at about 5 pm and went to the Galaxy Mall for dinner at a restaurant serving cuisines typical of Java Timur.

The Surabaya Retreat 2009 (11).....Rained out at the Ciputra....

the Ciputra club-house...

water-features at the clubhouse..

fairway view from the garden terrace..

There were 11 golfers altogether who signed up for the Surabaya Retreat 2009. Three of them, pakAli Ariffin, pakRoslan and pakSirajuddin had come one day earlier and had the benefit of a practice round at the Bukit Darmo where pakSirajudin was reported to have played so well and had 'lynched' the other two golfers!

Pakdokter's group of 4 arrived on the early Malaysia Airlines flight which was only about a third full ( perhaps the economic slowdown is also showing its effect...) and was whisked off straight to the Ciputra Golf Club where we were welcomed by the earlier 3 golfers. After a lunch of ' sup buntut sapi' we teed-off from the 1st Nine at about noon.

pakZahardin at the tee of a par 3 hole No.2....

Ciputra Golf Course appears to be quite a friendly and relatively short course. The layout is almost always characterised by long fairway bunkers sometimes stretching for almost the whole length of the fairways...

So the risks of getting caught in the bunkers were very high....

even a seasoned senior golfer like pakZahardin could not escape the fairway bunker..

Pakdokter played with pakZahardin and pakZulkifli Rauf. Although pakdokter did not start out well, pakdokter's game improved towards the end of the 1st Nine and was starting to score bogeys and a par and then a birdie! at the eleventh hole when the sky suddenly started to pour heavily with an almost gale-force storm.

The last flight of 4 ( pakTengku Azman, pakWan Husin, pakHaji Amin and pak Rahman Salleh) who arrived late on the Airasia flight only managed to complete 6 holes. PakTengku Azman who played to a handicap of 24 shocked his flight mates when he parred the first 3 holes and they had started the game agreeing to quite a heavy bet......!

The rain went on for quite a while and as the course was heavily water-logged we decided to abandon the game. What a lucky escape for the guys who played with pakTengku Azman....

Pakdokter took the opportunity during the waiting period to try out one hour of a 'total body traditional Javanese massage' at the spa of the club. At least this made up for the abandoned game....

Ibu Fareeda (pakdokter's partner) and Ibu Fiona (pakZahardin's partner) who had checked into the hotel after lunch decided to pamper themselves to two and a half hours of Spa Treatment (mandi lulur, masker and massage) at the Martha Tilaar Spa located at the Majapahit....And they were very impressed by the treatment the received and wished that we had stayed at the grand Majapahit hotel.

We all were bussed to Restoran Sari Bundo where we had a dinner of Nasi Padang...

dinner at Sari Bundo.....